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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Herbivory

Theses/Dissertations

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Gynodioecy And Biotic Interactions: Plant Traits, Insect Preferences, And Population-Level Consequences, Laura A. D. Doubleday Jul 2018

Gynodioecy And Biotic Interactions: Plant Traits, Insect Preferences, And Population-Level Consequences, Laura A. D. Doubleday

Doctoral Dissertations

In species with distinct sexes, differences between the sexes often affect interspecific interactions. In gynodioecious flowering plants, where individuals are female or hermaphrodite, both pollinators and herbivores tend to prefer hermaphrodites. Because pollinators and herbivores affect plant fitness, their preferences have consequences for plant mating patterns, natural selection on mating-related traits, and plant breeding system evolution. Being sessile, the spatial arrangement of females and hermaphrodites in gynodioecious plant populations alters conspecific density and sex ratio locally, which can also have important fitness effects. My dissertation combines observational studies in natural Silene vulgaris populations and simulation modeling to address questions about …


Specialization And Trade-Offs In Plant-Feeding Insects, Daniel Peterson Nov 2017

Specialization And Trade-Offs In Plant-Feeding Insects, Daniel Peterson

Doctoral Dissertations

The immense diversity of life on Earth has been attributed to the partitioning of available resources into ecological niches, but it is not obvious what determines the niche size of each species. For example, most plant-feeding insects consume only one or a few closely-related host-plant species despite the advantages of having a broader diet. Many researchers have therefore suggested that the evolution of broad diets in plant-feeding insects must be constrained by genetic trade-offs between adaptations to alternative host-plants. Despite its intuitive feel, however, little empirical evidence in support of the trade-off hypothesis has emerged from decades of experimental studies …