Abstract
Plants have traits against herbivory that may occur together and increase defense efficiency. We tested whether there are defense syndromes in a cerrado community and, if so, whether there is a phylogenetic signal in them. We measured nine defense traits from a woodland cerrado community in southeastern Brazil. We tested the correlation between all pairs of traits and grouped the species into defense syndromes according to their traits. Most pairwise correlations of traits were complementary. Plants with lower specific leaf area also presented tougher leaves, with low nitrogen, more trichomes, and tannins. We found five syndromes: two with low defenses and high nutritional quality, two with high defenses and low nutritional quality, and one with traits compensating each other. There were two predominant strategies against herbivory in cerrado: “tolerance” and “low nutritional quality” syndromes. Phylogeny did not determine the suite of traits species presented. We argue that herbivory exerts significant selection pressure on these plant defense traits.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, for financial support and for the scholarship granted to the first author; to Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, for the scholarship granted to the authors; to P. Loiola, V. Dantas, I. A. Silva, A. Rangel, F. T. Hanashiro, C. C. Angelieri, and C. Mizuno, for valuable help in field.; to M. I. S. Lima and M. Imatomi, for help with chemical analyzes.
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da Silva, D.M., Batalha, M.A. Defense syndromes against herbivory in a cerrado plant community. Plant Ecol 212, 181–193 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-010-9813-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-010-9813-y