{"id":1720,"date":"2014-05-27T19:39:47","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T00:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2014-05-28T11:53:42","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T16:53:42","slug":"plant-herbivory-is-lower-than-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/plant-herbivory-is-lower-than-previously-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Plants &#8211; what&#8217;s eating them?<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1667\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Quercus-rubra.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1667\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1667\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Quercus-rubra.jpg\" alt=\"Woody plants like this red oak experience higher predation than non-woody plants, but on average only about 5.3 per cent of all plant leaves get eaten by herbivores, much lower than previously thought. (Photo credit: Marc T. J. Johnson)\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Quercus-rubra.jpg 300w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Quercus-rubra-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Quercus-rubra-268x268.jpg 268w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1667\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Woody plants like this red oak experience higher predation than non-woody plants, but on average only about 5.3 per cent of all plant leaves get eaten by herbivores, much lower than previously thought. (Photo credit: Marc T. J. Johnson)<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\">A new analysis of over 1000 plant species shows that on average, only about 5.3 percent of their leaves are eaten by insects and vertebrate grazers &#8211; less than a third of previous estimates. This means that most of the energy captured by photosynthesis doesn\u2019t go \u2018up\u2019 the food chain, but instead is passed on to decomposers in the soil. A better understanding of how energy flows in ecosystems could help scientists predict how they will react to changes, such as an altered climate, invasive species or logging.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/281\/1787\/20140555.abstract?sid=71ab90fc-feca-4b31-8008-ab48c06c1a97\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the the <em>Proceedings of the Royal Society B\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>May 27, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><a style=\"color: #1155cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/individual.utoronto.ca\/martinturcotte\/\" target=\"_blank\">Martin M. Turcotte<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">, University of Toronto Mississauga, Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4><a style=\"color: #1155cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.utm.utoronto.ca\/biology\/people\/johnson-marc\" target=\"_blank\">Marc Johnson<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">, University of Toronto Mississauga, Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new analysis of over 1000 plant species shows that on average, only about 5.3 percent of their leaves are eaten by insects and vertebrate grazers &#8211; less than a third of previous estimates. This means that most of the energy captured by photosynthesis doesn\u2019t go \u2018up\u2019 the food chain, but instead is passed on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[113,171,1621,215,917,1620,1619,50,1618],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-biology","tag-ecology","tag-ecosystems","tag-environment","tag-evolution","tag-food-chain","tag-herbivore","tag-ontario","tag-plants"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Quercus-rubra.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-rK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}