Chemical ecology is the study of chemically-mediated interactions between living organisms, and the effects of those interactions on the demography, behavior and ultimately evolution of the organisms involved. It is thus a vast and highly interdisciplinary field. Chemical ecologists seek to identify the specific molecules that function as signals mediating community or ecosystem processes and to understand the evolution of these signals. The substances that serve in such roles are typically small, readily-diffusible organic molecules, but can also include larger molecules and small peptides.
Jasmonate (JA) and its derivatives are lipid-based plant hormones that regulate a wide range of processes in plants, ranging from growth and photosynthesis to reproductive development. In particular, JAs are critical for plant defense against herbivory and plant responses to poor environmental conditions and other kinds of abiotic and biotic challenges. Some JAs can also be released as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to permit communication between plants in anticipation of mutual dangers.
A hyperparasite, also known as a metaparasite, is a parasite whose host, often an insect, is also a parasite, often specifically a parasitoid. Hyperparasites are found mainly among the wasp-waisted Apocrita within the Hymenoptera, and in two other insect orders, the Diptera and Coleoptera (beetles). Seventeen families in Hymenoptera and a few species of Diptera and Coleoptera are hyperparasitic. Hyperparasitism developed from primary parasitism, which evolved in the Jurassic period in the Hymenoptera. Hyperparasitism intrigues entomologists because of its multidisciplinary relationship to evolution, ecology, behavior, biological control, taxonomy, and mathematical models.
Junonia coenia, known as the common buckeye or buckeye, is a butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. It is found in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and in Mexico. Its habitat is open areas with low vegetation and some bare ground. Its original ancestry has been traced to Africa, which then experiences divergence in Asia. The species Junonia grisea, the gray buckeye, is found west of the Rocky Mountains and was formerly a subspecies of Junonia coenia.
Plant defense against herbivory or host-plant resistance (HPR) describes a range of adaptations evolved by plants which improve their survival and reproduction by reducing the impact of herbivores. Plants can sense being touched, and they can use several strategies to defend against damage caused by herbivores. Many plants produce secondary metabolites, known as allelochemicals, that influence the behavior, growth, or survival of herbivores. These chemical defenses can act as repellents or toxins to herbivores or reduce plant digestibility. Another defensive strategy of plants is changing their attractiveness. To prevent overconsumption by large herbivores, plants alter their appearance by changing their size or quality, overall decreasing their consumption rate.
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. Plants, on the other hand, protect their resources for use in growth and reproduction, by limiting the ability of herbivores to eat them. Relationships between herbivores and their host plants often results in reciprocal evolutionary change. When a herbivore eats a plant it selects for plants that can mount a defensive response, whether the response is incorporated biochemically or physically, or induced as a counterattack. In cases where this relationship demonstrates "specificity", and "reciprocity", the species are thought to have coevolved. The escape and radiation mechanisms for coevolution, presents the idea that adaptations in herbivores and their host plants, has been the driving force behind speciation. The coevolution that occurs between plants and herbivores that ultimately results in the speciation of both can be further explained by the Red Queen hypothesis. This hypothesis states that competitive success and failure evolve back and forth through organizational learning. The act of an organism facing competition with another organism ultimately leads to an increase in the organism's performance due to selection. This increase in competitive success then forces the competing organism to increase its performance through selection as well, thus creating an "arms race" between the two species. Herbivores evolve due to plant defenses because plants must increase their competitive performance first due to herbivore competitive success.
In ecology, a community is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, or life assemblage. The term community has a variety of uses. In its simplest form it refers to groups of organisms in a specific place or time, for example, "the fish community of Lake Ontario before industrialization".
Insect ecology is the scientific study of how insects, individually or as a community, interact with the surrounding environment or ecosystem.
Robert F. Denno (1945–2008) was an influential insect ecologist. He wrote more than 130 research papers that helped advance the study of plant–insect interactions, interspecific competition, predator prey interactions and food web dynamics. He studied the ecology of sap-feeding insects, both in natural and cultivated settings. His study of wing polymorphism expanded into the fields of life history evolution, plant and herbivore interactions, community ecology, and many aspects of predator ecology, reviewed recently in Denno et al. (2005).
Green leaf volatiles (GLV) are volatile organic compounds that are released when plants suffer tissue damage. Specifically, they include aldehydes, esters, and alcohols of 6-carbon compounds released after wounding. These compounds are very quickly produced and emitted, and are used by nearly every green plant. Plants constantly release GLVs, but un-stressed plants release them in much smaller amounts. Some of these chemicals act as signaling compounds between either plants of the same species, of other species, or even vastly different lifeforms like insects. Some, although not necessarily all, of these chemicals act essentially as plant pheromones.[12] GLVs also have antimicrobial properties to prevent infection at the site of injury.
Ian Thomas Baldwin is an American ecologist.
Cotesia glomerata, the white butterfly parasite, is a small parasitoid wasp species belonging to family Braconidae. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 publication 10th edition of Systema Naturae.
Anurag Agrawal is an American professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and entomology who has written over a 150 peer-reviewed articles, which earned him an h-index of 92. He is the author of a popular science book, Monarchs and Milkweeds from Princeton University Press, and is currently the James Alfred Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies at Cornell University.
Tritrophic interactions in plant defense against herbivory describe the ecological impacts of three trophic levels on each other: the plant, the herbivore, and its natural enemies. They may also be called multitrophic interactions when further trophic levels, such as soil microbes, endophytes, or hyperparasitoids are considered. Tritrophic interactions join pollination and seed dispersal as vital biological functions which plants perform via cooperation with animals.
Vartika Mathur is an Indian scientist who is a professor in the Department of Zoology, Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. Mathur was the only Indian to receive the NFP fellowship in 2008 from Nuffic - an organization in partnership with Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (Netherlands) and Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This fellowship enabled her to pursue a PhD in Wageningen University and Research Centre. She worked in the Netherlands and India for four years and was awarded a PhD in 2012.
Naomi Cappuccino is an associate professor of biology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research primarily focuses on population ecology and biological control of invasive species.
Georg Jander is an American plant biologist at the Boyce Thompson Institute in Ithaca, New York. He has an adjunct appointment in the Plant Biology Section of the School of Integrative Plant Sciences at Cornell University. Jander is known for his molecular research identifying genes for biochemical compounds of ecological and agricultural importance, particularly those plant traits involved in resistance to insect pests.
John Norton Thompson is an American evolutionary biologist.
Myron P. Zalucki is an Australian professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Queensland (UQ). Zalucki is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, a member and secretary of the Council of the International Congresses of Entomology, and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Entomology.
Marcel Dicke is a Dutch professor of entomology who has been affiliated with Wageningen University since 2002. He conducts research on insects and has published in the scientific journals Science and Nature. Dicke received the Spinoza Prize in 2007 for his research on the interactions between plants and insects.
