Divergence and escalation in defences promote chemical diversity in plants, and consequently the diversity of insect herbivores. This diversification cascades to insect parasitoids through direct effects on host herbivore susceptibility, changes in herbivore community composition, or disparity in plant volatiles. Large tropical plant genera represent an ideal model for studying these trends due to the high diversity of sympatric species and their insects. Novel measures of chemical structural similarity should be used to analyse evolutionary trends in both direct and indirect defences. Host chemical data need to be combined with detailed herbivore and parasitoid data. This will help to identify truly active compounds. Furthermore, resolved genomic phylogenies for plants and insects should be included to assign directionality in the processes.

Biology Centre Czech Academy of Sciences Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic; Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic; Department of Crop and Environment Sciences Harper Adams University UK

Molecular Interaction Ecology Group German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle Jena Leipzig Leipzig Germany

Natural Chemistry Research Group Department of Chemistry University of Turku Turku Finland

Citace poskytuje Crossref.org

Branch-Localized Induction Promotes Efficacy of Volatile Defences and Herbivore Predation in Trees