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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.
To combat this, Lepidoptera have developed a number of strategies for defense and protection which include camouflage, aposematism, mimicry, and the development of threat patterns and displays. [72] Camouflage is an important defense strategy enabled by changes in body shape, colour, and markings.
Chemical communication in insects is social signalling between insects of the same or different species, using chemicals. These chemicals may be volatile, to be detected at a distance by other insects' sense of smell, or non-volatile, to be detected on an insect's cuticle by other insects' sense of taste.
Chemical defense is a strategy employed by many organisms to avoid consumption by producing toxic or repellent metabolites or chemical warnings which incite defensive behavioral changes. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The production of defensive chemicals occurs in plants, fungi, and bacteria, as well as invertebrate and vertebrate animals.
Insect adhesives contain a broad spectrum of isoprenoids. These compounds have been found in defense mechanisms in some species such as termites. [4] Amino acids, peptides, and proteins are nearly always found in insects' adhesive secretions. They are employed for adhesion across many functions such as defense, locomotion and cocoon building. [4]
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]
Some troops leave the battlefield injured. Others return from war with mental wounds. Yet many of the 2 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from a condition the Defense Department refuses to acknowledge: Moral injury.
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]