CONCLUSIONS
Our research exemplifies the interaction between plant-phenology and
plant-sex as drivers of arthropod community diversity. These effects can
be explained both through bottom-up forces –through changes in the
diversity, quantity, and quality of resources– and through top-down
mechanisms. These results highlight the importance of accounting for
seasonal variation when studying sexual dimorphism in plants and its
effect on resident arthropods. Although, the generality of our findings
is unknown given the paucity of such studies, we expect that variation
on plant-sex and arthropods interaction is important at least for
dioecious plants inhabiting seasonal environments. This time-dependent
framework has the potential to reconcile previous contrasting
observations reported in the literature. If we understand plant sexual
dimorphism as a time-dependent variable, and we consider the highly
dynamic nature of plant arthropod communities, as evidenced by our
results, it is possible that contrasting results about the effect of
plant sexual dimorphism on arthropod communities are the result of
observations made at different phenological stages. Further work is
needed to mechanistically link plant trait genetic variation
(i. e. , genetic sex-determination), to the structure of
associated arthropod communities to predict how plant responses to
abiotic and biotic conditions (like seasonality) can in turn affect the
broader ecological community.