Abstract
Plants, phytophagous insects and their parasitoids form the most diverse communities of macroscopic organisms on earth. Using molecular approaches, we document the composition and host specificity of a multi-trophic insect community associated with Ficus hirta throughout its 3500 km range across continental and insular Asia. We test expectations derived from population genetic and community studies. We find low host specificity in two genera of non-pollinating fig wasps. Functional community structure is largely conserved across the range of the host fig, despite limited correspondence between the ranges of nonpollinator and pollinator species. While nine pollinators are associated with Ficus hirta, the two non-pollinator tribes developing in its figs each contained only four species. Contrary to predictions we find stronger isolation by distance in non-pollinators than pollinators. Long lived non-pollinators may disperse more gradually and be less reliant on infrequent longdistance dispersal by wind currents. Segregation among non-pollinating species across their range is suggestive of competitive exclusion and we propose that this may be a result of increased levels of local adaptation and moderate, but regular, rates of dispersal. Our findings provide one more example of lack of strict codiversification in the geographic diversification of plant associated insect-communities.