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Plant defense against herbivory or host-plant resistance is a range of adaptations evolved by plants which improve their survival and reproduction by reducing the impact of herbivores. Many plants produce secondary metabolites, known as allelochemicals, that influence the behavior, growth, or survival of herbivores. These chemical defenses can ...
Herbivores are dependent on plants for food, and have coevolved mechanisms to obtain this food despite the evolution of a diverse arsenal of plant defenses against herbivory. Herbivore adaptations to plant defense have been likened to "offensive traits" and consist of those traits that allow for increased feeding and use of a host. [1]
For example, the production of nicotine in cultivated tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) has a function in plant defence. N. tabacum plants with a higher constitutive level of nicotine are less susceptible to insect herbivory. [8] However, N. tabacum plants that produce a continually high level of nicotine flower significantly later than plants with ...
Tolerance is the ability of plants to mitigate the negative fitness effects caused by herbivory. It is one of the general plant defense strategies against herbivores, the other being resistance, which is the ability of plants to prevent damage (Strauss and Agrawal 1999). Plant defense strategies play important roles in the survival of plants as ...
Plants are able to determine what types of herbivore species are present, and will react differently given the herbivore's traits. If certain defense mechanisms are not effective, plants may turn to attracting natural enemies of herbivore populations. For example, wild tobacco plants use nicotine, a neurotoxin, to defend against herbivores ...
When an invasive herbivore or plant enters the system, the balance is thrown off and the diversity can collapse to a monotaxon system. [63] The back and forth relationship of plant defense and herbivore offense drives coevolution between plants and herbivores, resulting in a "coevolutionary arms race".
A plants response to herbivores starts with the recognition of certain chemicals that are abundant in the saliva of the herbivores. These compounds that trigger a response in plants are known as elicitors or herbivore-associated molecular patterns (HAMPs). [ 11 ]
Neotyphodium spp. are commonly associated with tall fescue in the leaf sheath tissue. They produce secondary metabolites toxic to herbivores. Plant use of endophytic fungi in defense occurs when endophytic fungi, which live symbiotically with the majority of plants by entering their cells, are utilized as an indirect defense against herbivores.