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Feeding Preferences Of A Generalist Salt-Marsh Crab: Relative Importance Of Multiple Plant Traits, Steven C. Pennings, Thomas H. Carefoot, Erin L. Siska, Margo E. Chase, Teresa A. Page

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Few studies have evaluated the relative importance of multiple plant traits to herbivore diet choice, especially with an experimental approach. Moreover, although circumstantial evidence points to plant toughness and silica content as important deter- minents of diet choice, few studies have experimentally demonstrated that these factors actually deter feeding by herbivores. We examined feeding preferences of a generalist salt- marsh crab, Armases cinereum, for all the common angiosperms in its habitat. We took an experimental approach to evaluating the importance of toughness, secondary chemistry, silica, salt, and protein in determining feeding preferences. Consumption of plants by Armases in two experiments …