STRETCHING THE LIMITS OF PLASTICITY: CAN A PLANT DEFEND AGAINST BOTH COMPETITORS AND HERBIVORES?

By D. Cipollini. 2004

121 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Plants exhibit numerous adaptive responses to competitors and herbivores mediated by hormones, including induction of the shade avoidance syndrome in response to neighbor shade, and induction of chemical defenses in response to herbivore damage. Although largely studied in isolation, interactions between plastic responses to competitors and herbivores can occur and may be mediated by external and internal resource availability, direct interactions between hormones controlling plastic responses, or other pleiotropic effects. Such interactions may have positive or negative consequences for plant fitness and could serve as an important ecological and evolutionary constraint on the expression of these responses. In this article, I illustrate the potential for plastic responses in plants to physiologically interact, with particular reference to Arabidopsis thaliana. I also suggest avenues for future study utilizing characterized plant material, tools to manipulate the expression of plastic responses, and ways to monitor physiological and ecological consequences that are available using this and other plant species.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65b1fbc4ae373fe4cff1d2701b414b2962f5e648

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Insect Science

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Ecological limits to plant phenotypic plasticity. (2007, background): “The latter are putative cost-saving mechanisms and, thereby, can be considered as adaptive phenotypic plasticity allowing plants to maximize fitness in each environment (Karban & Baldwin, 1997; Cipollini, 2004).”
Costs and benefits of induced resistance to herbivores and pathogens in plants (2010, background): “As a consequence of these non-linear interactions between soil fertility, competition and the occurrence of resistance costs, plants can potentially increase their fitness by reducing defence when competition with other plants is likely [89].”
RESISTANCE AND SUSCEPTIBILITY OF MILKWEED: COMPETITION, ROOT HERBIVORY, AND PLANT GENETIC VARIATION (2004, background): “MANOVA Stems Height Widths Wilks' lambda df F P χ2 F P χ2 F P χ2 F P Grass 0.795 3, 115 9.89 0.001 11.14 0.001 3.34 0.070 13.43 0.001 Beetle 0.803 3, 115 9.42 0.001 0.00 0.978 12.48 0.001 11.60 0.001 Grass X Beetle 0.948 3, 115 2.12 0.102 4.88 0.029 5.92 0.016 5.94 0.016 Family 0.582 39, 341 1.76”
Re-evaluating the costs and limits of adaptive phenotypic plasticity (2010, background): “Numerous other studies have demonstrated that response to one environment can alter the capacity for response to another, and these effects are determined, as mentioned earlier, by the ontogenetic stage that different environments are experienced (e.g. Weinig & Delph 2001; Cipollini 2004; Kurashige ”
Future directions in the study of induced plant responses to herbivory (2005, background): “Recent models and evidence suggests that plant responses to herbivores and light competition may present a trade-off (Cipollini, 2004; Kurashige & Agrawal, 2005), which may be due to phytohormonal interactions or simply opposing trait values when plants are challenged by competitors vs. herbivores.”