CONCLUSIONS
Our research exemplifies the interaction between plant-phenology and plant-sex as drivers of arthropod community diversity. These effects can be explained both through bottom-up forces –through changes in the diversity, quantity, and quality of resources– and through top-down mechanisms. These results highlight the importance of accounting for seasonal variation when studying sexual dimorphism in plants and its effect on resident arthropods. Although, the generality of our findings is unknown given the paucity of such studies, we expect that variation on plant-sex and arthropods interaction is important at least for dioecious plants inhabiting seasonal environments. This time-dependent framework has the potential to reconcile previous contrasting observations reported in the literature. If we understand plant sexual dimorphism as a time-dependent variable, and we consider the highly dynamic nature of plant arthropod communities, as evidenced by our results, it is possible that contrasting results about the effect of plant sexual dimorphism on arthropod communities are the result of observations made at different phenological stages. Further work is needed to mechanistically link plant trait genetic variation (i. e. , genetic sex-determination), to the structure of associated arthropod communities to predict how plant responses to abiotic and biotic conditions (like seasonality) can in turn affect the broader ecological community.