The Bug‐Network ( BugNet ): A Global Experimental Network Testing the Effects of Invertebrate Herbivores and Fungal Pathogens on Plant Communities and Ecosystem Function in Open Ecosystems

作者：Anne Kempel, George C. Adamidis, José D. Anadón, Joe Atkinson, Harald Auge, Dimitrios Ν. Avtzis, Bénédicte Bachelot, Maral Bashirzadeh, Julien L Bota, Aimée T. Classen, Ioannis Constantinou, Mick Crawley, Tonia De Bellis, Petr Dostál, Anne Ebeling, Nico Eisenhauer, David J. Eldridge, Gustavo Encina, Catalina Estrada, Susan E. Everingham, Nicolas Fanin, Yanhao Feng, Mario Gaspar, Leana Gooriah, Pamela Graff, Elizabeth Gusmán‐Montalván, Pamela Gusmán Montalván, Tamara R. Hartke, Linjia Huang, Malte Jochum, Karin Kaljund, Ilias Karmiris, Kadri Koorem, Lotte Korell, Anna‐Liisa Laine, Gaëtane Le Provost, J. LESSARD, Mu Liu, Xiang Liu, Yanjie Liu, Juan Carlos Llancabure, Sidonie Loïez, Alejandro Loydi, Hugo J. Marrero, Shelby Gockel, Adrián Montoya, Zuzana Münzbergová, Yujie Niu, David Ott, Mariano Oyarzábal, Maria Panitsa, Efimia M. Papatheodorou, Frida I. Piper, Kersti Püssa, Karin Rand, Hugo Sáiz, Nathan J. Sanders, Martin Schädler, Christoph Scherber, Marina Semchenko, Siim‐Kaarel Sepp, Manzoor A. Shah, Ishrat Shaheen, Cláudia Stein, Jana Stewart, Zhuangsheng Tang, Georg F. Tschan, Saskya van Nouhuys, Martijn L. Vandegehuchte, Millie Vernon, V. R. Sonali, Jianyong Wang, Yao Xiao, Fotios Xystrakis, Jie Yang, Siwei Yang, Konstantina Zografou, Eric Allan · 发表于：Ecology and Evolution · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1002/ece3.72111 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Plant and animal studies、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Species Distribution and Climate Change

Plants are consumed by a variety of organisms, including herbivores and pathogens, which significantly impact plant biomass, diversity, community composition, and ecosystem functioning. While the impacts of vertebrate herbivores are well established, the effects of consumer groups such as insect herbivores, mollusks, and fungal pathogens on plant communities are less clear and remain understudied in many systems. Existing evidence of how they affect plant biomass, diversity, and community composition is mixed, and most studies have focused on individual consumer groups in isolation. However, different consumer groups interact with each other, directly or indirectly, in ways that alter their impacts on plants, and the consequences of these interactions for plant community structure and ecosystem function remain understudied. Further, consumer impacts vary across environmental gradients and likely depend on abiotic conditions such as climate, soil type, or elevation, and biotic conditions such as plant productivity, diversity, or community composition. Existing studies testing the impacts of invertebrate herbivores and fungal pathogens on plant communities differ substantially in methodology, making generalities across large scales difficult. This calls for experimental approaches that implement standardized protocols across many sites. Here, we introduce and report on the methodology of a novel global research network, The Bug-Network (BugNet), that implements standardized con...