Conclusion
Our study has emphasized the importance of taking a community-wide
approach when quantifying latitudinal variation in herbivore pressure,
revealing how community-wide herbivory varies latitude. We also provide
new empirical evidence that climate plays a primary role in driving
variation in community-wide herbivory, via effects on intraspecific
herbivory variability. More broadly, as plant and insect species may
undergo range shifts to higher latitudes in response to global warming
(Buse et al. 2013; Cavanaugh et al. 2014), the higher latitudes of the
Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau are expected to experience greater herbivore
pressure. Therefore, field data from latitudinal surveys, together with
evidence from experimental temperature treatments, are needed to
evaluate the indirect impacts of climate change on plant communities via
changing herbivore pressure.
Acknowledgements
We thank Yimin Zhao, Sirui Zhu and Yan Sun for assistance in the field.
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grants No. 32001116), the Gansu Provincial Science Fund for
Distinguished Young Scholars (Grants No. 21JR7RA532), Start-up Funds for
Introduced Talent in Lanzhou University (Grants No. 561119211) and the
Fundamental Research Fund for Central Universities (Grants No.
lzujbky-2021-ct16).