Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Zu, Pengjuan
• Boege, Karina
• del-Val, Ek
• Schuman, Meredith C.
• Stevenson, Philip C.
• Zaldivar-Riverón, Alejandro
• Saavedra, Serguei

Titel

Information arms race explains plant-herbivore chemical communication in ecological communities

Ist Teil von

• Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2020-06, Vol.368 (6497), p.1377-1381

Ort / Verlag

Washington: The American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A plant-herbivore information “arms race” The consumption of plants by herbivores has driven the evolution of many diverse plant defense chemicals to which herbivores have constantly adapted. The transmission of chemical information at the community level is less known but important given the plethora of plant and herbivore species, especially in tropical communities. Zu et al. propose an information “arms race” approach to explain plant-herbivore chemical communication at the community level (see the Perspective by Solé). To test their conceptual framework, they used field data of herbivore-plant interactions and plant–volatile organic compound associations in a tropical dry forest. Their approach provides an understanding of the functioning and persistence of systems where individuals send and receive information in the form of signals to which other individuals react and, in turn, affect the behavior of other participants in these systems. Science , this issue p. 1377 ; see also p. 1315 An information theory framework for chemical signaling explains the evolutionary “arms race” between plants and insect herbivores. Plants emit an extraordinary diversity of chemicals that provide information about their identity and mediate their interactions with insects. However, most studies of this have focused on a few model species in controlled environments, limiting our capacity to understand plant-insect chemical communication in ecological communities. Here, by integrating information theory with ecological and evolutionary theories, we show that a stable information structure of plant volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can emerge from a conflicting information process between plants and herbivores. We corroborate this information “arms race” theory with field data recording plant-VOC associations and plant-herbivore interactions in a tropical dry forest. We reveal that plant VOC redundancy and herbivore specialization can be explained by a conflicting information transfer. Information-based communication approaches can increase our understanding of species interactions across trophic levels.