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Ontogeny and season constrain the production of herbivore-inducible plant volatiles in the field.

ABSTRACT: Herbivores may induce plants to produce an array of volatile organic compounds (herbivore-induced plant volatiles, or HIPVs) after damage, and some natural enemies of herbivores are attracted by those HIPVs. The production of HIPVs by the undomesticated species Datura wrightii was quantified in response to damage by its natural community of herbivores or the plant hormone methyl jasmonate (MeJA) over plant's 6-month growing season. Patterns of HIPV production were compared to the seasonal abundance of D. wrightii's two most abundant herbivores, the chrysomelid beetle Lema daturaphila and the mirid bug Tupiocoris notatus, and their shared generalist predator, the lygaeid bug Geocoris pallens. HIPV production was especially high in the spring, when plants were growing vegetatively, but HIPV production declined after plants began to flower and produce fruit, and these volatiles no longer were inducible by September. The composition of the HIPV blends also changed seasonally. HIPV production and composition were partially restored by "rejuvenating" plants back to the vegetative growth stage independently of season by cutting them back and allowing them to resprout and regrow vegetatively. HIPV production of D. wrightii in the field is limited to the earlier ontogenetic stages of growth, despite the fact that both herbivores and their shared natural enemy inhabited plants throughout the full season. The adaptive value of HIPV production in D. wrightii may be constrained by plant ontogeny to the vegetative stages of plant growth.

SUBMITTER: Hare JD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3010200 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Ontogeny and season constrain the production of herbivore-inducible plant volatiles in the field.

Hare J Daniel JD

Journal of chemical ecology 20101109 12

Herbivores may induce plants to produce an array of volatile organic compounds (herbivore-induced plant volatiles, or HIPVs) after damage, and some natural enemies of herbivores are attracted by those HIPVs. The production of HIPVs by the undomesticated species Datura wrightii was quantified in response to damage by its natural community of herbivores or the plant hormone methyl jasmonate (MeJA) over plant's 6-month growing season. Patterns of HIPV production were compared to the seasonal abunda ...[more]

PMID: 21058044

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Project description:Predatory mites locate herbivorous mites, their prey, by the aid of herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPV). These HIPV differ with plant and/or herbivore species, and it is not well understood how predators cope with this variation. We hypothesized that predators are attracted to specific compounds in HIPV, and that they can identify these compounds in odor mixtures not previously experienced. To test this, we assessed the olfactory response of Phytoseiulus persimilis, a predatory mite that preys on the highly polyphagous herbivore Tetranychus urticae. The responses of the predatory mite to a dilution series of each of 30 structurally different compounds were tested. They mites responded to most of these compounds, but usually in an aversive way. Individual HIPV were no more attractive (or less repellent) than out-group compounds, i.e., volatiles not induced in plants fed upon by spider-mites. Only three samples were significantly attractive to the mites: octan-1-ol, not involved in indirect defense, and cis-3-hexen-1-ol and methyl salicylate, which are both induced by herbivory, but not specific for the herbivore that infests the plant. Attraction to individual compounds was low compared to the full HIPV blend from Lima bean. These results indicate that individual HIPV have no a priori meaning to the mites. Hence, there is no reason why they could profit from an ability to identify individual compounds in odor mixtures. Subsequent experiments confirmed that naive predatory mites do not prefer tomato HIPV, which included the attractive compound methyl salicylate, over the odor of an uninfested bean. However, upon associating each of these odors with food over a period of 15 min, both are preferred. The memory to this association wanes within 24 hr. We conclude that P. persimilis possesses a limited ability to identify individual spider mite-induced plant volatiles in odor mixtures. We suggest that predatory mites instead learn to respond to prey-associated mixtures of volatiles and, thus, to odor blends as a whole.

Dataset Information

Ontogeny and season constrain the production of herbivore-inducible plant volatiles in the field.

Publications

Ontogeny and season constrain the production of herbivore-inducible plant volatiles in the field.

Similar Datasets

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