PLANTÐINSECT INTERACTIONS Response of a Gall-Forming Guild (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) to Stressed and Vigorous Prairie Roses

Two general hypotheses that describe the relationship between plant quality and host-plant preference of insect herbivores are the plant-stress and plant-vigor hypotheses. We examined the response of a gall-forming guild of insect herbivores associated with prairie rose, Rosa arkansana Porter (Rosaceae), to experimental manipulations of plant stress (addition of NaCl) and vigor (addition of nitrogen; NH4NO3). Themost commonmembers of the gall-forming guild on roses are Diplolepis ignota Osten Sacken, D. nodulosa Beutenmüller, and D. rosaefolii Cockerell (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae). The repeated application of nitrogen throughout the growing season to prairie plots resulted in signiÞcantly higher plant nitrogen levels and plant growth rates. Both low and high NaCl additions caused leaves to turn yellow and wilt, but reductions in rose growth rates or xylem waterpotentialswithNaCl additionswerenot statistically signiÞcant.All threemembersof thecynipid guild responded similarly to nitrogen and NaCl additions to rose plots. Incidence of occurrence and density within a plot decreased with increasing nitrogen or NaCl, but the decline associated with increasingNaClwas not signiÞcant for any of the cynipids. Neither the plant-vigor hypothesis (higher abundance on fast-growing, vigorous plants) nor the plant-stress hypothesis (higher abundance on physiologically stressed plants) was supported by this study. For cynipids, there is growing evidence that larvae perform best on plant tissues low in nitrogen (less vigorous plants). Agricultural runoff, of which nitrogen is an important constituent, may be signiÞcantly altering cynipid distributions and their interactions with other members of the tall-grass prairie ecosystem.