TY - JOUR
T1 - Specialist versus generalist insect herbivores and plant defense
AU - Ali, Jared G.
AU - Agrawal, Anurag A.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Martin Heil, Sergio Rasmann, Andre Kessler, Jennifer Thaler and the Plant-Interactions Group at Cornell for helpful comments and the United States National Science Foundation (DEB-1118783) for financial support.
PY - 2012/5
Y1 - 2012/5
N2 - There has been a long-standing hypothesis that specialist and generalist insects interact with plants in distinct ways. Although many tests exist, they typically compare only one species of each, they sometimes confound specialization and feeding guild, and often do not link chemical or transcriptional measures of the plant to actual resistance. In this review, we synthesize current data on whether specialists and generalists actually differ, with special attention to comparisons of their differential elicitation of plant responses. Although we find few consistencies in plant induction by specialists versus generalists, feeding guilds are predictive of differential plant responses. We outline a novel set of predictions based on current coevolutionary hypotheses and make methodological suggestions for improved comparisons of specialists and generalists.
AB - There has been a long-standing hypothesis that specialist and generalist insects interact with plants in distinct ways. Although many tests exist, they typically compare only one species of each, they sometimes confound specialization and feeding guild, and often do not link chemical or transcriptional measures of the plant to actual resistance. In this review, we synthesize current data on whether specialists and generalists actually differ, with special attention to comparisons of their differential elicitation of plant responses. Although we find few consistencies in plant induction by specialists versus generalists, feeding guilds are predictive of differential plant responses. We outline a novel set of predictions based on current coevolutionary hypotheses and make methodological suggestions for improved comparisons of specialists and generalists.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.tplants.2012.02.006
DO - 10.1016/j.tplants.2012.02.006
M3 - Review article
C2 - 22425020
AN - SCOPUS:84860686808
SN - 1360-1385
VL - 17
SP - 293
EP - 302
JO - Trends in Plant Science
JF - Trends in Plant Science
IS - 5
ER -