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The bacterium Klebsiella aerogenes produces the volatile 2,3-butanediol, which modulates interactions between plants, pathogens, and insects. [48] When maize plants are grown in a soil culture containing the bacterium or the plants are inoculated with the bacterium, the maize is more resistant to the fungus Setosphaeria turcica. [48]
Distinct signal transduction pathway are activated in response either to insect damage or mechanical damage in plants. [23] While chemicals released in wounding responses are the same in both cases, the pathway in which they accumulate are separate. Not all herbivore attack begins with feeding, but with insects laying eggs on the plant.
The protease enzyme is a protein in the gut that helps the insect digest its main source of food: plant tissue. Many types of plants produce protease inhibitors, which inactivate proteases. Protease inactivation can lead to many issues such as reduced feeding, prolonged larval development time, and weight gain.
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.
One example of insect mutualism is the pollination of flowering plants by insects, a field of study known as anthecology. Primarily, various bee species work as pollinators of flowering plants, feeding on their nectar and in turn picking up their pollen and spreading it to other flowers. [ 28 ]
Plants evolved chemical defenses against this herbivory and the insects in turn evolved mechanisms to deal with plant toxins. [5] These toxins limit the diet breadth of herbivores, and evolving mechanisms to nonetheless continue herbivory is an important part of maintaining diet breadth in insects, and so in their evolutionary history as a whole.
Insectivorous plants include the Venus flytrap, several types of pitcher plants, butterworts, sundews, bladderworts, the waterwheel plant, brocchinia and many members of the Bromeliaceae. The list is far from complete, and some plants, such as Roridula species, exploit the prey organisms mainly in a mutualistic relationship with other creatures ...
The insect order Neuroptera, or net-winged insects, includes the lacewings, mantidflies, antlions, and their relatives. The order consists of some 6,000 species . [ 1 ] Neuroptera is grouped together with the Megaloptera ( alderflies , fishflies , and dobsonflies ) and Raphidioptera (snakeflies) in the unranked taxon Neuropterida (once known as ...