Insects and Plants Flashcards
What is Phytophagy?
Plant feeding behaviour
Why are insect interactions important for plants?
Pollination and myrmecochory (movement of seeds)
When did plant associated mouthparts first evolve?
Late carboniferous
What were the earliest angiosperms pollinated by?
Beetles
What are the challenges in dealing with plants?
Hold onto plant, subject to dessicaiton, plant tissue nutritionally difficient, plant defenses.
What are the advantages of plant associations?
abundant resource, plants are immobile
What are the physical defenses of plants?
Spines, trichomes, pubescence, silica or sclerenchyma, tissue toughness
What are the chemical defenses of plants?
Secondary plant compounds, some affect plant behaviour to deter, repel or inhibit feeding/oviposition. Some have physiological effects to poison or reduce nutritional content
What are the two types of poisons used for chemical defense of plants?
Qualitative that work in small quantities, quantitative that act in proportion to the amount eaten
What does the Monarch butterfly do with plant defenses?
Sequesters them in their body and concentrates them in adult form to deter their own predators.
What are the different types of plant diets that insects can have?
Monophagous (one taxon), oligophagous (feed on a few taxa), polyphagous (generalists that feed on many plant groups
What are the different forms of phytophagy?
Leaf chewing, mining leaves and stems, sucking sap from vascular tissue, forming galls, eating seeds
What are the main orders of leaf chewers?
Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, Phasmatodea
What are the different types of plant mining?
Leaf mining, stalk/stem boring, wood boring, fruit boring
What are the characteristics of leaf miners?
live in between epidermal layers, flattened, prognathous mouthparts
What are characteristics of stalk/stem borers?
attack grasses and succulents are important pests
What are characteristics of wood boring insects?
feed in twigs, stems and trunks, feed on bark phloem sapwood heartwood
What are advantages of fruit boring?
Physically easy, nutrient-rich, mainly dipteran lepidopteran and coleopteran
What are the different aspects of seed predation?
Seeds are nutritious seeds are protected by coatings toxins and masting
What are the different orders that predate on seeds?
Coleoptera, Hemiptera, harvester ants and some lepidoptera
What are the orders that do sap sucking?
Hemiptera and Thysanoptera
What are the different aspects of plant sucking?
withdrawal of cell contents, structural damage is inconspicuous, less biomass, transmit plant viruses, gall formation
What are galls?
Pathologically developped cells, tissues and organs of plants that havea risen by hypertrophy as a result of stimulation from a foreign organism
What are the two types of galls?
Indeterminate galls (undifferentiated masses of cells), determinate galls (High organized structures with distinct tissue layers
What are the steps of galls?
Starts by the initiation of gall and growth and maintenance of gall
How does the gall initiation go?
target actively growing tissue with oral secretions, anal secretions accessory gland secretions, plant hormones and genetic entities
How does growth and maintenance of the gall go?
continued stimulation by insect of plant cells, highly nutritious food source, and protection, some enemies can attack the gall using volatiles.
