Million Trees can never resist a response to misinformation we find in Jake Sigg’s Nature News. (In this case, the statement originates with one of Jake’s readers, not Jake himself.)
“This study takes some of the life out of Art Shapiro’s ecological fitting theory: Non‐native plants supported significantly fewer caterpillars of significantly fewer specialist and generalist species even when the non‐natives were close relatives of native host plants.” “Non-native plants reduce abundance, richness, and host specialization in lepidopteran communities” by Karin Burghardt, Doug Tallamy, et, al. (Ecosphere, November 2010).
We’ll get to the study later, but first let’s address the statement about ecological fitting. Ecological fitting is more accurately described as an observation, rather than a theory or hypothesis and it does not originate with Art Shapiro. The first observation of ecological fitting was recorded by Dan Janzen in 1980 and described by other ecologists as “the process whereby organisms colonize and persist in novel environments, use novel resources or form novel associations with other species as a result of the suites of traits that they carry at the time they encounter the novel condition.” (1) Ecological fitting is an alternative to the view that relationships between plants and insects and parasites and hosts are the result of co-evolution. It is consistent with the observation that adaptation to new arrivals in an ecosystem often occurs without evolutionary change and can occur more rapidly than co-evolution would require.
Ecological Laboratory Science
The Burghardt/Tallamy study is a laboratory experiment in the sense that it creates an artificial environment by planting a garden in which it chooses the plant species and then inventories the insect visitors to the garden. In one garden, native plant species were paired with a closely related species of non-native plant in the same genus (called congeners). In another, distant garden, native plant species were paired with unrelated species of non-native plants. The insect visitors that were counted are specifically the larvae stages (caterpillars) of lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). The adult stage of the caterpillars (moths and butterflies) were not inventoried, nor were members of the other 28 insect orders.
The study considers caterpillars “specialists” if they feed on three or fewer plant families. The authors make this determination based on scientific literature and on observations of their artificially created garden. Using scientific literature, 30% of visiting caterpillar species to the experimental garden were specialists. Using actual visits to their experimental garden, 64% of visiting caterpillars were specialists. The difference is as we should expect because the scientific literature is based on the behavior of caterpillars in the field, but the study confines the choices of the caterpillars to a few specific plant species chosen by the authors of the study. In other words, caterpillars in the experimental garden had fewer choices of plant species.
The inventory of caterpillars was conducted over two summer months in 2008 and three summer months in 2009. Findings were very different in the two years of the study: “We found no difference between the total Lepidoptera larvae supported by native plants and their non-native congeners in 2008, but found over three fold more larvae on natives in 2009. In 2008 there was no difference in the abundance of generalists on native and non-native congeners, but natives supported more than twice as many generalists as non-natives in 2009.” (2) Similar results were reported for species richness (number of different larvae species). When paired with unrelated non-native plants, caterpillars showed a significant preference for native plant species, as we should expect because the plants were not chemically similar.
Although on average, native species attracted more caterpillars than the non-native congener with which they were paired, the strength of that difference varied significantly. One matched pair attracted eight times as many caterpillars to the native plant compared to the non-native plant. Another matched pair attracted slightly more caterpillars to the non-native plant compared to the native plant.
The study authors interpret the significant differences between findings in the first and second years as an indication that caterpillars accumulated more rapidly on native plants than on non-native plants. They speculate that a longer study would have found even greater preferences for native plants compared to non-native congeners. Given that adaptation to introduced species occurs over time that is a counter-intuitive prediction. In fact, many studies find that insects have made a successful transition from native to non-native hosts within a few generations.
Limitations of laboratory studies
The Burghardt/Tallamy study is often cited by native plant advocates in support of their belief that insects require native plants for survival. This generalization is not supported by the results of the Burghardt/Tallamy study because:
- The study results are not relevant to all insects. The findings apply only to the larvae stages of moths and caterpillars. The adult stages of moths and butterflies also require nectar and pollen from a much broader range of plants than their host plant, where the adult lays its eggs and caterpillars feed before becoming flying adults. At the adult stage of their lives, they become pollinators. Studies of the preferences of pollinators consistently find that a diverse garden that prolongs the blooming period is most useful to them.
- The study does not support the claim that caterpillars consistently choose native plants in preference to closely related non-native plants over time. In fact, other studies find such preferences fade over longer periods of time.
- Statements made by native plant advocates about the degree to which caterpillars are “specialized” are often exaggerated. When a diverse landscape is available to caterpillars, scientific literature reports that specialization to a few plant families is found in only 30% of the 72 caterpillar species identified by this study.
- The Burghardt/Tallamy study was conducted on the East Coast where the climate is different than California. It snows in the winter and it rains during the summer, unlike most of California. Our native plants are therefore different from natives on the East Coast. The Burghardt/Tallamy study was conducted in the summer months from June to August. Native plants in California are no longer blooming and many are dormant during summer months unless they are irrigated. The findings of the Burghardt/Tallamy study are therefore not applicable to California unless they can be replicated here.
Comparison of laboratory with field studies
The Burghardt/Tallamy study does not contradict the findings of Professor Art Shapiro because Professor Shapiro is studying butterflies (not moths) in “natural areas” that have not been artificially created by choosing a limited number of plant species. In other words, the adult and larvae stages of butterflies that Professor Shapiro studies have more options, and when they do they are as likely to choose a non-native plant as a native plant for both host plant and food plant. You might say, Professor Shapiro’s study occurs in the “real world” and the Burghardt/Tallamy study occurs in an artificially created world.
The credibility and relevance of Professor Shapiro’s studies are also based on 47 years of visiting his research plots at least 250 days per year, that is, year around. During that period of time, he recorded his observations and they were statistically analyzed for the study he published in 2003. (3) His study is of particular interest as the climate changes rapidly because the length of the study also enables us to observe the impact of climate change on our butterfly population in the Bay Area. In contrast the Burghardt/Tallamy study was conducted in a total of 5 months over a total of two years. Population trends cannot be determined from such a short study.
Burghardt/Tallamy study is consistent with mission of Million Trees
The Burghardt/Tallamy study does not contradict anything Million Trees advocates for. Decisions to plant a particular species and the decision to eradicate a particular species are entirely different. Gardeners should plant whatever they prefer, in my opinion. When planting decisions are made for public land, I prefer that plants be capable of surviving current local and climate conditions. When my tax dollars are being spent, I prefer that they not be wasted. Besides, I hate watching plants and trees die in the parks I visit.
This study is consistent with my view that non-native plants don’t threaten the survival of insects unless they replace native plants that insects prefer. The Burghardt/Tallamy study quite rightly does not say that they do. Local experience in the Bay Area informs me that they rarely do. To the extent that they have replaced native plants, they are better adapted to current conditions in a specific location. Eradicating them rarely results in native plants successfully replacing them. As the climate continues to rapidly change, the failure of native plant “restorations” is inevitable because vegetation changes when the climate changes.
The Burghardt/Tallamy study does not justify eradication of non-native plants because it does not take into account the damage done by the methods used to eradicate non-native plants. Since most eradication projects use herbicides, we speculate that more harm is done to insects by herbicides than by the existence of non-native plants.
The decision to eradicate non-native plants must also take into consideration whatever benefit the plants may provide, such as food for wildlife. For example, even if a plant species isn’t a host plant, it might be a food plant. Butterfly bush (Buddleia) is an example of a plant that is very useful to pollinators, including butterflies, but native plant activists advocate for its eradication.
Many thanks to Jake Sigg for creating this opportunity for dialogue with native plant advocates. I am grateful for the window into the community of native plant advocates that Jake’s Nature News provides.
- Agosta, Salvatore J.; Jeffrey A. Klemens (2008). “Ecological fitting by phenotypically flexible genotypes: implications for species associations, community assembly and evolution”. Ecology Letters. 11 (11): 1123–1134.
- “Non-native plants reduce abundance, richness, and host specialization in lepidopteran communities” by Karin Burghardt, Doug Tallamy, et, al. (Ecosphere, November 2010).
- SD Graves and AM Shapiro, “Exotics as host plants of the California butterfly fauna,” Biological Conservation, 110 (2003) 413-433
Conservation Sense and Nonsense 
Very interesting article.