Insects and Plants

Question 1

What is Phytophagy?

Answer 1

Plant feeding behaviour

Question 2

Why are insect interactions important for plants?

Answer 2

Pollination and myrmecochory (movement of seeds)

Question 3

When did plant associated mouthparts first evolve?

Answer 3

Late carboniferous

Question 4

What were the earliest angiosperms pollinated by?

Answer 4

Beetles

Question 5

What are the challenges in dealing with plants?

Answer 5

Hold onto plant, subject to dessicaiton, plant tissue nutritionally difficient, plant defenses.

Question 6

What are the advantages of plant associations?

Answer 6

abundant resource, plants are immobile

Question 7

What are the physical defenses of plants?

Answer 7

Spines, trichomes, pubescence, silica or sclerenchyma, tissue toughness

Question 8

What are the chemical defenses of plants?

Answer 8

Secondary plant compounds, some affect plant behaviour to deter, repel or inhibit feeding/oviposition. Some have physiological effects to poison or reduce nutritional content

Question 9

What are the two types of poisons used for chemical defense of plants?

Answer 9

Qualitative that work in small quantities, quantitative that act in proportion to the amount eaten

Question 10

What does the Monarch butterfly do with plant defenses?

Answer 10

Sequesters them in their body and concentrates them in adult form to deter their own predators.

Question 11

What are the different types of plant diets that insects can have?

Answer 11

Monophagous (one taxon), oligophagous (feed on a few taxa), polyphagous (generalists that feed on many plant groups

Question 12

What are the different forms of phytophagy?

Answer 12

Leaf chewing, mining leaves and stems, sucking sap from vascular tissue, forming galls, eating seeds

Question 13

What are the main orders of leaf chewers?

Answer 13

Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, Phasmatodea

Question 14

What are the different types of plant mining?

Answer 14

Leaf mining, stalk/stem boring, wood boring, fruit boring

Question 15

What are the characteristics of leaf miners?

Answer 15

live in between epidermal layers, flattened, prognathous mouthparts

Question 16

What are characteristics of stalk/stem borers?

Answer 16

attack grasses and succulents are important pests

Question 17

What are characteristics of wood boring insects?

Answer 17

feed in twigs, stems and trunks, feed on bark phloem sapwood heartwood

Question 18

What are advantages of fruit boring?

Answer 18

Physically easy, nutrient-rich, mainly dipteran lepidopteran and coleopteran

Question 19

What are the different aspects of seed predation?

Answer 19

Seeds are nutritious seeds are protected by coatings toxins and masting

Question 20

What are the different orders that predate on seeds?

Answer 20

Coleoptera, Hemiptera, harvester ants and some lepidoptera

Question 21

What are the orders that do sap sucking?

Answer 21

Hemiptera and Thysanoptera

Question 22

What are the different aspects of plant sucking?

Answer 22

withdrawal of cell contents, structural damage is inconspicuous, less biomass, transmit plant viruses, gall formation

Question 23

What are galls?

Answer 23

Pathologically developped cells, tissues and organs of plants that havea risen by hypertrophy as a result of stimulation from a foreign organism

Question 24

What are the two types of galls?

Answer 24

Indeterminate galls (undifferentiated masses of cells), determinate galls (High organized structures with distinct tissue layers

Question 25

What are the steps of galls?

Answer 25

Starts by the initiation of gall and growth and maintenance of gall

Question 26

How does the gall initiation go?

Answer 26

target actively growing tissue with oral secretions, anal secretions accessory gland secretions, plant hormones and genetic entities

Question 27

How does growth and maintenance of the gall go?

Answer 27

continued stimulation by insect of plant cells, highly nutritious food source, and protection, some enemies can attack the gall using volatiles.