| Title: |
The Bug‐Network (BugNet) : A Global Experimental Network Testing the Effects of Invertebrate Herbivores and Fungal Pathogens on Plant Communities and Ecosystem Function in Open Ecosystems |
| Authors: |
Kempel, Anne; Adamidis, George C.; Anadón, José D.; Atkinson, Joe; Auge, Harald; Avtzis, Dimitrios Ν.; Bachelot, Bénédicte; Bashirzadeh, Maral; Bota, Julien L; Classen, Aimée T.; Constantinou, Ioannis; Crawley, Michael J; Bellis, Tonia De; Dostál, Petr; Ebeling, Anne; Eisenhauer, Nico; Eldridge, David J.; Encina, Gustavo; Estrada, Catalina; Everingham, Susan E.; Fanin, Nicolas; Feng, Yanhao; Gaspar, Mario; Gooriah, Leana; Graff, Pamela; Gusmán‐Montalván, Elizabeth; Montalván, Pamela Gusmán; Hartke, Tamara R.; Huang, Linjia; Jochum, Malte; Kaljund, Karin; Karmiris, Ilias; Koorem, Kadri; Korell, Lotte; Laine, Anna-Liisa; Provost, Gaëtane Le; Lessard, J-R.; Liu, Mu; Liu, Xiang; Liu, Yanjie; Llancabure, Juan Carlos; Löiez, Sidonie; Loydi, Alejandro; Marrero, Hugo J.; Gockel, Sonja; Montoya, Alex Vinicio Gavilanes; Münzbergová, Zuzana; Niu, Yujie; Ott, David; Oyarzábal, Mariano; Panitsa, Maria; Papatheodorou, Efimia M.; Piper, Frida I.; Püssa, Kersti; Rand, Karin; Sáiz, Hugo; Sanders, Nathan J.; Schädler, Martin; Scherber, Christoph; Semchenko, Marina; Sepp, Siim‐Kaarel; Shah, Manzoor A.; Shaheen, Ishrat; Stein, Cláudia; Stewart, Jana; Tang, Zhuangsheng; Tschan, Georg F.; van Nouhuys, Saskya; Vandegehuchte, Martijn L.; Chinchilli, Vernon M.; Reisinger, Sonali N.; Wang, Jianyong; Xiao, Yao; Xystrakis, Fotios; Yang, Jie; Yang, Siwei; Zografou, Konstantina; Allan, Eric |
| Contributors: |
Viikki Plant Science Centre (ViPS); Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology; Research Centre for Ecological Change |
| Publisher Information: |
John Wiley and Sons Ltd |
| Publication Year: |
2025 |
| Collection: |
Helsingfors Universitet: HELDA – Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto |
| Subject Terms: |
Species Distribution and Climate Change; Fungal pathogens; Globally coordinated experimental network; Insecticide; Molluscicide; Exclusion experiment; Mollusks; Fungicide; Insect herbivores; Maintenance of biodiversity; Ecology; evolutionary biology |
| Description: |
Plants are consumed by a variety of organisms, including herbivores and pathogens, which significantly impact plant biomass, diversity, community composition, and ecosystem functioning. While the impacts of vertebrate herbivores are well established, the effects of consumer groups such as insect herbivores, mollusks, and fungal pathogens on plant communities are less clear and remain understudied in many systems. Existing evidence of how they affect plant biomass, diversity, and community composition is mixed, and most studies have focused on individual consumer groups in isolation. However, different consumer groups interact with each other, directly or indirectly, in ways that alter their impacts on plants, and the consequences of these interactions for plant community structure and ecosystem function remain understudied. Further, consumer impacts vary across environmental gradients and likely depend on abiotic conditions such as climate, soil type, or elevation, and biotic conditions such as plant productivity, diversity, or community composition. Existing studies testing the impacts of invertebrate herbivores and fungal pathogens on plant communities differ substantially in methodology, making generalities across large scales difficult. This calls for experimental approaches that implement standardized protocols across many sites. Here, we introduce and report on the methodology of a novel global research network, The Bug-Network (BugNet), that implements standardized consumer-reduction experiments across 5 continents and 18 countries in diverse, herbaceous- or shrub-dominated ecosystems to investigate: (1) the influence of fungal pathogens, insect herbivores, and mollusks on plant diversity and ecosystem functioning, (2) interactions among these consumer groups, and (3) the abiotic and biotic drivers of context-dependent consumer impacts. BugNet aims to advance a predictive understanding of plant-consumer interactions in order to test fundamental ecological hypotheses and improve predictions of global ... |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project nr. 310030_212359, to A.K.). Additional funding was provided by the European Union (ERC grant PlantSoilAdapt, 101044424 to M.S.), the Estonian Research Council (PRG1836 to K.K.), and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (Center of Excellence AgroCropFuture “Agroecology and new crops in future climates,” TK200 to M.S. and K.K.). N.E. and I.C. acknowledge support from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle–Jena–Leipzig, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; FZT 118, 202548816), as well as by the DFG (Ei 862/29-1). D.J.E. is supported by the Hermon Slade Foundation. M.A.S. acknowledges financial support under the LTEO project No. 13008/72/2019-CC by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India. Z.M. and P.D. were supported by a long-term research development project (RVO 67985939) of the Czech Academy of Sciences and institutional support from the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic. Work at UMBS was supported by the University of Michigan. Team LIB's work was supported by the University of Bonn (Germany). Team McP was supported by the Program Advancing Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity at Oklahoma State University and the USDA-NIFA AFRI ELI REEU program (award no. 2018-67033-27698).; https://hdl.handle.net/10138/603074; 105018603039; 001591107300001 |
| Availability: |
https://hdl.handle.net/10138/603074 |
| Rights: |
cc_by ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess ; openAccess |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.E628B380 |
| Database: |
BASE |