Summary Historically, ferns have been described as underutilized by insects. However, studies have shown a diversity of insects interacting with ferns, although the evolutionary and ecological drivers of these interactions are still to be untangled. To fill these gaps, we compiled more than 100 yr of global data on insect–fern interactions from the literature comprising 374 fern and 649 insect species. With this database we assessed how fern trophic specialization, phylogenetic relationships and climate have shaped their interactions with insects. Our findings showed that interactions between ferns and insects can be explained by the phylogenetic relations among them. We observed that insect orders part of the Endopterygota clade tend to interact with similar fern species, which might be a result of the inheritance of Endopterygota ancestors probably due to phylogenetic niche conservationism. Under an ecological context, fern specialization increased with temperature, precipitation, and climatic stability. Our results show that climate might be one of the main factors explaining the spatial variation of insect–fern interactions, postulate also supported by the observed phylogenetic clustering of the studied ferns species. Our study highlights the intricate and multifaceted nature of insect–fern interactions, where evolutionary history and ecological factors converge to shape these relationships.

中文翻译：

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昆虫-蕨类植物相互作用及其生态趋势的全球概述


总结 从历史上看，蕨类植物被描述为昆虫未充分利用。然而，研究表明，昆虫与蕨类植物互动的多样性，尽管这些互动的进化和生态驱动因素仍有待解开。为了填补这些空白，我们从包括 374 种蕨类植物和 649 种昆虫物种的文献中汇编了 100 多年关于昆虫-蕨类植物相互作用的全球数据。通过这个数据库，我们评估了蕨类植物的营养特化、系统发育关系和气候如何影响它们与昆虫的相互作用。我们的研究结果表明，蕨类植物和昆虫之间的相互作用可以用它们之间的系统发育关系来解释。我们观察到，内翅目分支中的昆虫目倾向于与类似的蕨类植物物种相互作用，这可能是由于系统发育生态位保守主义而导致内翅目祖先遗传的结果。在生态背景下，蕨类植物特化程度随着温度、降水和气候稳定性的增加而增加。我们的结果表明，气候可能是解释昆虫-蕨类植物相互作用空间变化的主要因素之一，所研究的蕨类植物物种的观测系统发育聚类也支持这一假设。我们的研究强调了昆虫-蕨类植物相互作用的复杂性和多方面性，其中进化历史和生态因素汇聚在一起塑造了这些关系。