Spider mites collectively avoid plants with cadmium irrespective of their frequency or the presence of competitorsuse asterix (*) to get italics

Diogo Prino Godinho*, Ines Fragata*, Maud Charlery de la Masseliere, Sara MagalhaesPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2024

<p>1. Plants can accumulate heavy metals from polluted soils on their shoots and use this to defend themselves against herbivory. One possible strategy for herbivores to cope with the reduction in performance imposed by heavy metal accumulation in plants is avoidance of contaminated tissues. Such avoidance, however, may hinge upon the specific conditions faced by herbivores. 2. Here, we tested whether the spider mite Tetranychus urticae avoids tomato plants contaminated with cadmium in presence of conspecifics or heterospecifics and depending on the frequency of contaminated plants. 3. We show that individual spider mite females do not discriminate between discs with or without cadmium. However, in a set-up where 200 mites were simultaneously given the choice between four plants with or without cadmium, they collectively avoided plants with cadmium. This happened when 50% of the plants were uncontaminated, but also when only a single plant contained no cadmium. In addition, T. urticae did not discriminate between plants infested with its competitor T. evansi and other uncontaminated plants but they preferred plants with competitors when the other plants contained cadmium. 4. Our results show that aggregation may be an important mechanism through which spider mites avoid contaminated plants. They also indicate that cadmium accumulation in plants is a stronger selective pressure than interspecific competition with T. evansi. This suggests that non-accumulating plants will suffer more from herbivory than accumulating plants in metal polluted environments. 5. Synthesis and applications. We show that collective avoidance of metal-accumulating plants by herbivores is robust to environmental conditions and may have important consequences for species distribution and interactions in metal contaminated sites.</p>

https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24511093.v1You should fill this box only if you chose 'All or part of the results presented in this preprint are based on data'. URL must start with http:// or https://

https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24511093.v1You should fill this box only if you chose 'Scripts were used to obtain or analyze the results'. URL must start with http:// or https://

metal hyperaccumulation; elemental defences; herbivore performance; host choice; interspecific competition.

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Behaviour & Ethology, Competition, Habitat selection, Herbivory

Filipe Lemos, felipelemosufv@gmail.com, Elizabeth K. Peterson, ekpeterson@eiu.edu, Cesar Rodriguez-Saona, crodriguez@njaes.rutgers.edu, Robby Stoks, robby.stoks@kuleuven.be, Elizabeth Pilon-Smits, epsmits@lamar.colostate.edu, Susana Gonçalves [scgoncal@ci.uc.pt] suggested: Titian Lin, tlinsau@163.com No need for them to be recommenders of PCIEcology. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct

2023-11-09 11:52:58

Ruben Heleno