Analysis Assignment 4 In the 1990s, ecologists Deborah Letourneau and Lee Dyer studied a tropical forest shrub called th

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Analysis Assignment 4
In the 1990s, ecologists Deborah Letourneau and Lee Dyer studied
a tropical forest shrub called the piper plant (Piper
cenocladum) and the various species of insects that live on
and near the shrub. A species of ant (Pheidole bicornis)
uses the piper plant as a home by hollowing out some of its
branches and building colonies inside the hollow branch cores. The
ants do not eat the plant’s leaves. Instead, the leaves are
consumed by many species of caterpillars. When the ants encounter
caterpillars or caterpillar eggs on the plant’s leaves, they either
eat them or kick them off. Letourneau and Dyer added beetles
(Tarsobaenus letourneauae) that eat ants. Figure 2 shows
the results of one of Letourneau and Dyer’s experiments in which
they compared the leaf area of piper plants in control plots
without beetles to that of experimental plots to which they had
added beetles that eat ants.
Figure 2. Mean leaf area per tree. Initial
measurements were taken before (0 to 2 months) and after (7 to 18
months) beetles were added to 40 of 80 plants. The black round
markers represent measurements taken of the control plots, to which
beetles were not added. The black square markers represent
measurements taken of the experimental plots, to which beetles were
added. Measurements were made on all leaves to calculate the mean
leaf area per plant. Error bars represent standard error of the
mean.
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