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NIBIOs ansatte publiserer flere hundre vitenskapelige artikler og forskningsrapporter hvert år. Her finner du referanser og lenker til publikasjoner og andre forsknings- og formidlingsaktiviteter. Samlingen oppdateres løpende med både nytt og historisk materiale. For mer informasjon om NIBIOs publikasjoner, besøk NIBIOs bibliotek.

2021

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Aim It is generally assumed that the degree of resource specialization in herbivorous insects increases towards lower latitudes. However, latitudinal patterns in herbivore diet breadth at large spatial scales remain poorly understood. In this work, we investigated the drivers of latitudinal variation in lepidopteran ‘fundamental’ resource specialization, which we defined as the host breadth when not limited by interspecific interactions at the same trophic level. Location The Japanese archipelago (22°N–45°N), including hemiboreal, temperate and subtropical zones. Taxon Herbivorous butterflies. Methods Species-specific fundamental host breadth was calculated based on pooled host-use records. We investigated the latitudinal pattern and significant drivers of the degree of specialization in regional species pools at a 10-km grid level. As potential drivers, we focused on geography, current climate and diversity and body size of butterflies. Through Bayesian structural equation modelling, we investigated the complicated relationships between these variables and community-level resource specialization represented by three different indices of host breadth. Results We found that the fundamental resource specialization of butterfly communities increases towards higher latitudes. This pattern is contrary to the presumed general trend found in studies based on realized resource specialization within local communities. We found that the observed pattern is driven mainly by factors related to climate, butterfly diversity and body size in each community. Above all, annual mean temperature most strongly drove community-level fundamental host breadth of herbivorous butterflies. Main conclusions Our findings suggest that the fundamental resource specialization may show different latitudinal patterns from the conventional prediction based on knowledge of realized resource specialization. Our results emphasize the importance of the current climate as a major factor regulating butterfly morphology and fundamental host breadth, regardless of whether the impact is direct or indirect.

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The spruce bark beetle Ips typographus is the most damaging pest in European spruce forests and has caused great ecological and economic disturbances in recent years. Although native to Eurasia, I. typographus has been intercepted more than 200 times in North America and could establish there as an exotic pest if it can find suitable host trees. Using in vitro bioassays, we compared the preference of I. typographus for its coevolved historical host Norway spruce (Picea abies) and two non-coevolved (naïve) North American hosts: black spruce (Picea mariana) and white spruce (Picea glauca). Additionally, we tested how I. typographus responded to its own fungal associates (conspecific fungi) and to fungi vectored by the North American spruce beetle Dendroctonus rufipennis (allospecific fungi). All tested fungi were grown on both historical and naïve host bark media. In a four-choice Petri dish bioassay, I. typographus readily tunneled into bark medium from each of the three spruce species and showed no preference for the historical host over the naïve hosts. Additionally, the beetles showed a clear preference for bark media colonized by fungi and made longer tunnels in fungus-colonized media compared to fungus-free media. The preference for fungus-colonized media did not depend on whether the medium was colonized by conspecific or allospecific fungi. Furthermore, olfactometer bioassays demonstrated that beetles were strongly attracted toward volatiles emitted by both con- and allospecific fungi. Collectively, these results suggest that I. typographus could thrive in evolutionary naïve spruce hosts if it becomes established in North America. Also, I. typographus could probably form and maintain new associations with local allospecific fungi that might increase beetle fitness in naïve host trees.