Resumo: | Wigandia urens (Ruiz & Pavón) H.B.K. (Hydrophyllaceae) is a common shrub at the Pedregal de San Angel reserve in Mexico City. This species has a great morphological and chemical variation on leaves and stems. It is possible to recognize two types of leaves on plants of W. urens: smooth leaves with only glandular trichomes and bristly leaves with urticant hairs and glandular trichomes. The presence and density of trichomes vary according to leaf age and environmental heterogeneity. The great variation of plants of W. urens represents a mosaic of resources to herbivores associated to them. In this study, feeding preferences and patterns of establishment of the most common herbivores on plants of W. urens in the Pedregal de San Angel were studied. Field observations and acceptability experiments were performed. In this study, we found 14 species of herbivore insects belonging to five different orders (Diptera, Hemiptera, Homoptera, Lepidoptera and Orthoptera). In general, all the species showed different degrees of specificity and preference for different parts of W. urens in the field.
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