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The great majority (80–99.99%) of individuals born do not survive to reproductive age, with perhaps 50% of this mortality rate attributed to predation. [1] In order to deal with this ongoing escapist battle, insects have evolved a wide range of defense mechanisms.
Plants have evolved many defense mechanisms against insect herbivory in the 350 million years in which they have co-evolved.Such defenses can be broadly classified into two categories: (1) permanent, constitutive defenses, and (2) temporary, inducible defenses. [1]
Viburnum lesquereuxii leaf with insect damage; Dakota Sandstone (Cretaceous) of Ellsworth County, Kansas. Scale bar is 10 mm. Knowledge of herbivory in geological time comes from three sources: fossilized plants, which may preserve evidence of defense (such as spines) or herbivory-related damage; the observation of plant debris in fossilised animal feces; and the structure of herbivore mouthparts.
[1] [2] Tritrophic interactions join pollination and seed dispersal as vital biological functions which plants perform via cooperation with animals. [ 3 ] Natural enemies— predators , pathogens , and parasitoids that attack plant-feeding insects—can benefit plants by hindering the feeding behavior of the harmful insect.
Among the insects, many moths turn sharply, fall, or perform a powered dive in response to the sonar clicks of bats. [76] Among fish, the stickleback follows a zigzagging path, often doubling back erratically, when chased by a fish-eating merganser duck.
Some chemical defenses once thought to be produced by the plant have since been shown to be synthesized by endophytic fungi. The chemical basis of insect resistance in endophyte-plant defense mutualisms has been most extensively studied in the perennial ryegrass and three major classes of secondary metabolites are found: indole diterpenes, ergot alkaloids and peramine.
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A worker can explode suicidally and aggressively as an ultimate act of defense, an ability it has in common with several other species in this genus and a few other insects. [1] The ant has an enormously enlarged mandibular gland, many times the size of other ants, which produces adhesive secretions for defense. [2]