A large trophic quilt

Abstract

Plants and invertebrate herbivores are major constituents of terrestrial food webs. Identifying component species and tracing their interactions in highly diverse communities are a monumental task. Novotny et al. 2010 present the first broad conspectus of herbivore–plant interactions in a forest in Papua New Guinea. In more than 15 years, nearly 7000 feeding links were traced between about 200 plants and 1500 insect herbivores. Although staggering, these figures might represent only 15% of the total herbivore richness and interaction diversity in that lowland forest. Standardized comparisons also showed distinctive specialization and diversification patterns in different feeding guilds, restricting the possibility of using any single guild as surrogate for the entire assemblage.