Little peaks with big effects: establishing the role of minor plant volatiles in plant-insect interactions

Maternal Effects in Insect-Plant Interactions:

Maternal effects occur when the phenotype or environment of a mother affects the phenotype of her offspring via some mechanism other than the transmission of genes. The primary objective of this review is to use examples from my own research on the interaction between seed beetles and their host plants to illustrate how maternal effects influence ecological interactions in nature. I explain how...

The role of cytochrome P450 monooxygenases in plant-insect interactions.

Plants and herbivorous insects interact at the most fundamental of levels. With few exceptions, in the battle waged daily between these two groups of organisms, one serves as food source, the other as consumer. From a plant’s perspective, success in this interaction is measured by its ability to defend itself from devastation by insect feeding. From an insect’s perspective, success is measured ...

Plant polyploidy and insect/plant interactions.

We used flow cytometry and extensive geographic surveys of herbivore attack to test whether repeated evolution of autotetraploidy in the perennial herb Heuchera grossulariifolia Rydb. (Saxifragaceae) has created evolutionary barriers to attack by the specialist moth herbivore Greya politella (Prodoxidae). We found that the moth has colonized tetraploid as well as diploid populations, has coloni...

Plant–insect Interactions and Pollution

Update on Biochemistry of Plant Volatiles Biochemistry of Plant Volatiles

Plants have a penchant for perfuming the atmosphere around them. Since antiquity it has been known that both floral and vegetative parts of many species emit substances with distinctive smells. The discovery of the gaseous hormone ethylene 70 years ago brought the realization that at least some of the compounds emitted may have physiological significance without any distinctive smell to humans....