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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.
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]
This recruitment of natural enemies functions to protect against excessive herbivory and is considered an indirect plant defense mechanism. [3] Traits attractive to natural enemies can be physical, as in the cases of domatia and nectaries ; [ 1 ] or chemical, as in the case of induced plant volatile chemicals that help natural enemies pinpoint ...
The plant provides the ant with shelter and food bodies in return for protection against herbivory, but the ants also sterilize the plant by removing flower buds. C. nodosa is able to compensate for this by reallocating resources to produce flowers on branches not occupied by castrating ants (Edwards and Yu, 2008).
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.
Plants have evolved many defense mechanisms against insect herbivory in the 350 million years in which they have co-evolved.Such defenses can be broadly classified into two categories: (1) permanent, constitutive defenses, and (2) temporary, inducible defenses. [1]
Prickles on a blackberry branch. In plant morphology, thorns, spines, and prickles, and in general spinose structures (sometimes called spinose teeth or spinose apical processes), are hard, rigid extensions or modifications of leaves, roots, stems, or buds with sharp, stiff ends, and generally serve the same function: physically defending plants against herbivory.
Many endophytes protect plants from herbivory from both insects and animals by producing secondary metabolites that are either unappetizing or toxic to the herbivore. [73] Increasingly there has been great importance placed on endophytes that protect valuable crops from invasive insects.