Abstract
Plants may be able to regulate the amount of herbivory they sustain if they can somehow provide negative feedback to herbivores that increases in proportion to the amount of their herbivore injury. Depending on the strength of this feedback and its timing relative to the herbivore’s population processes, it could keep herbivory to nearly negligible levels, or on the other hand, it could allow wide variations (cycles) in herbivory. Hence, learning how plants react to injury and defoliation is essential to test the regulation hypothesis. Because plants offer both nutrients and potentially dangerous allelo-chemicals to insects, investigations of plant responses must at least consider changes in both of these broad classes of substances.
Several studies have clearly shown that one common reaction by plants to defoliation is an increase in the class of foliar allelo-chemicals known as phenolics (Thielges 1968, Kosuge 1969, Niemelä et al. 1979, Schultz and Baldwin 1982, Waters and Stafford 1984, Wratten et al. 1984, Wagner and Evans 1985, Nef in this volume, Wagner in this volume). Other studies have shown a variety of changes in plant nutrient levels following defoliation. Water content may increase (Svejcar and Christiansen 1987) as may nitrogen (Landsberg and Wylie 1983, Piene and Percy 1984, Ericsson et al. 1985, Wagner and Evans 1985, Mika 1986, Wagner in this volume), calcium (Valentine et al. 1983), and potassium (Nef in this volume).
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Mattson, W.J., Palmer, S.R. (1988). Changes in Levels of Foliar Minerals and Phenolics in Trembling Aspen, Populus tremuloides, in Response to Artificial Defoliation. In: Mattson, W.J., Levieux, J., Bernard-Dagan, C. (eds) Mechanisms of Woody Plant Defenses Against Insects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3828-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3828-7_9
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