Arthropods association to plant sex
We collected a total of 1,961 arthropods in female and male trees ofB. cordata . From these arthropods, we identified 87 morphospecies
in 15 different orders–the list of morphospecies is in Supplemental
Materials III. We only considered adult morphospecies for the subsequent
analyses. For arthropod abundance, we did not detect significant
differences between plant sex (P=0.62); however, time and the
interaction between sex*time had a significant effect on arthropod
abundance (𝛘2=1488.9, P<0.0001 and
𝛘2=16.08, P=0.006 respectively). The highest abundance
of arthropods was recorded during the first collection date decreasing
with time (Fig 2 ). When we compared species richness by plant
sex, 68 morphospecies were found in female plants and 72 in male plants,
from which 53 species were shared between sexes, which corresponds to a
0.61% Jaccard’s similarity index. Then, according to Hill numbers, we
did not detect differences on the effective number of species per plant
sex (0D ) across time (Fig. 3 ). When we
tested the exponential of Shannon’s entropy
(1D ) and the inverse of Simpson’s index
(2D ), they present an interesting reverse
pattern. Diversity was higher in male plants for both metrics early in
the season, then during the middle of the season they show no
differences between sexes whereas by October-November both metrics
display a reverse pattern, having females showing higher diversity and
higher evenness (Fig. 3 ).
Sixty four out of 87 morphospecies found in this study were classified
into a particular guild. These morphospecies contained 1,810 specimens
(92% of all arthropods collected). When compared with at -student-paired test, neither herbivores nor carnivores showed
significant differences (𝛘2=0.05, P=0.81;
𝛘2=0.14, P=0.70; Figure 4). When we evaluated richness
per guild per time, again herbivores did not show significant
differences between males and females at any time; however, carnivores
did show significant differences in June and December. Indeed, more
carnivores were found in male plants in June (𝛘2=4.98,
d.f.= 1, P=0.02; Figure 4), then after five months we found a reverse
pattern with more carnivore species found in female plants
(𝛘2=3.94, d.f.= 1, P=0.04; Figure 4). Regarding
detritivores, only seven morphospecies (24 individuals) were found in
this guild, so a statistical analysis was not possible.