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Evolution of Plant Defence to Herbivores 2nd Edition
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Evolution of Plant Defence to Herbivores 2nd Edition

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2024) | Viewed by 4034

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Juan Núñez-Farfán

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratory of Ecological Genetics and Evolution, Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Institute of Ecology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Av. Universidad 3000, Coyoacán, Mexico City 04510, Mexico
Interests: ecological genetics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The evolution of plant defences against herbivores is a paradigmatic field of ecology, encompassing genomic changes up to ecological communities and seeking to understand the vast array of plant adaptations, at the cellular to organismic levels, originated/maintained in interaction with different and diverse kind of herbivores under varying environmental conditions. The diversity of resistance traits, notably chemical, deployed by different plant organs in response to herbivory, has stimulated the scientific search for general patterns, if any, of conditions and/or factors that promote/limit their evolutionary outcomes. Several hypotheses for the evolution of plant defences to herbivores have been proposed in the past decades, with few maintaining their explanatory power today. Advances in the study of specialized (secondary) defence chemicals and genetic variations of these traits (even at the genomic level), in model and non-model plants, lead to the refinement of hypotheses and to the advancement of new ones. This issue of Plants is intended as a forum to present new ideas, and/or empirical and experimental evidence on the evolution of plant defences against herbivores that will call for new avenues of synthetic research in this topic in the years to come.

Dr. Juan Núñez-Farfán
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • phenotypic diversity of plant defence traits
  • theories of plant defence
  • environmental circumstances and the evolution of plant defence
  • genomics of plant defence traits
  • plant defence and global change

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 5517 KiB  
Article
Evidence for Reductions in Physical and Chemical Plant Defense Traits in Island Flora
by Micah G. Freedman, Randall W. Long, Santiago R. Ramírez and Sharon Y. Strauss
Plants 2024, 13(7), 1026; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13071026 - 3 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1516
Abstract
Reduced defense against large herbivores has been suggested to be part of the “island syndrome” in plants. However, empirical evidence for this pattern is mixed. In this paper, we present two studies that compare putative physical and chemical defense traits from plants on [...] Read more.
Reduced defense against large herbivores has been suggested to be part of the “island syndrome” in plants. However, empirical evidence for this pattern is mixed. In this paper, we present two studies that compare putative physical and chemical defense traits from plants on the California Channel Islands and nearby mainland based on sampling of both field and common garden plants. In the first study, we focus on five pairs of woody shrubs from three island and three mainland locations and find evidence for increased leaf area, decreased marginal leaf spines, and decreased concentrations of cyanogenic glycosides in island plants. We observed similar increases in leaf area and decreases in defense traits when comparing island and mainland genotypes grown together in botanic gardens, suggesting that trait differences are not solely driven by abiotic differences between island and mainland sites. In the second study, we conducted a common garden experiment with a perennial herb—Stachys bullata (Lamiaceae)—collected from two island and four mainland locations. Compared to their mainland relatives, island genotypes show highly reduced glandular trichomes and a nearly 100-fold reduction in mono- and sesquiterpene compounds from leaf surfaces. Island genotypes also had significantly higher specific leaf area, somewhat lower rates of gas exchange, and greater aboveground biomass than mainland genotypes across two years of study, potentially reflecting a broader shift in growth habit. Together, our results provide evidence for reduced expression of putative defense traits in island plants, though these results may reflect adaptation to both biotic (i.e., the historical absence of large herbivores) and climatic conditions on islands. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolution of Plant Defence to Herbivores 2nd Edition)
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18 pages, 3005 KiB  
Article
A Trip Back Home: Resistance to Herbivores of Native and Non-Native Plant Populations of Datura stramonium
by Juan Núñez-Farfán, Sabina Velázquez-Márquez, Jesús R. Torres-García, Ivan M. De-la-Cruz, Juan Arroyo, Pedro L. Valverde, César M. Flores-Ortiz, Luis B. Hernández-Portilla, Diana E. López-Cobos and Javier D. Matías
Plants 2024, 13(1), 131; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13010131 - 2 Jan 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1957
Abstract
When colonizing new ranges, plant populations may benefit from the absence of the checks imposed by the enemies, herbivores, and pathogens that regulated their numbers in their original range. Therefore, rates of plant damage or infestation by natural enemies are expected to be [...] Read more.
When colonizing new ranges, plant populations may benefit from the absence of the checks imposed by the enemies, herbivores, and pathogens that regulated their numbers in their original range. Therefore, rates of plant damage or infestation by natural enemies are expected to be lower in the new range. Exposing both non-native and native plant populations in the native range, where native herbivores are present, can be used to test whether resistance mechanisms have diverged between populations. Datura stramonium is native to the Americas but widely distributed in Spain, where populations show lower herbivore damage than populations in the native range. We established experiments in two localities in the native range (Mexico), exposing two native and two non-native D. stramonium populations to natural herbivores. Plant performance differed between the localities, as did the abundance of the main specialist herbivore, Lema daturaphila. In Teotihuacán, where L. daturaphila is common, native plants had significantly more adult beetles and herbivore damage than non-native plants. The degree of infestation by the specialist seed predator Trichobaris soror differed among populations and between sites, but the native Ticumán population always had the lowest level of infestation. The Ticumán population also had the highest concentration of the alkaloid scopolamine. Scopolamine was negatively related to the number of eggs deposited by L. daturaphila in Teotihuacán. There was among-family variation in herbivore damage (resistance), alkaloid content (scopolamine), and infestation by L. daturaphila and T. soror, indicating genetic variation and potential for further evolution. Although native and non-native D. stramonium populations have not yet diverged in plant resistance/constitutive defense, the differences between ranges (and the two experimental sites) in the type and abundance of herbivores suggest that further research is needed on the role of resource availability and adaptive plasticity, specialized metabolites (induced, constitutive), and the relationship between genealogical origin and plant defense in both ranges. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolution of Plant Defence to Herbivores 2nd Edition)
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