Plant induced responses to herbivory have long been found to function as plant direct and indirect defenses and to be major drivers of herbivore community and population dynamics. While induced defenses are generally understood as cost-saving strategies that allow plants to allocate valuable resources into defense expression, it recently became clear that, in particular, induced metabolic changes can come with significant ecological costs. In particular, interactions with mutualist pollinators can be significantly compromised by herbivore-induced changes in floral morphology and metabolism. We review recent findings on the evidence for ecological conflict between defending against herbivores and attracting pollinators while using similar modes of information transfer (e.g. visual, olfactory, tactile). Specifically, we discuss plant traits and mechanisms through which plants mediate interactions between antagonists and mutualist and present functional hypotheses for how plants can overcome the resulting conflicts.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
July 2020
Issue Editors
-
Cover Image
Cover Image
The cover of this issue of
Emerging Topics in Life Sciences: New Directions in Pollinator Research , features an illustration from the review by Kessler and Chautá. In their review, they discuss how herbivory can affect the outcome of plant-pollinator interactions through plant metabolic changes induced by herbivores.
Review Article|
June 15 2020
The ecological consequences of herbivore-induced plant responses on plant–pollinator interactions
André Kessler;
André Kessler
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A.
Search for other works by this author on:
Alexander Chautá
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A.
Correspondence: André Kessler (ak357@cornell.edu)
Search for other works by this author on:
Publisher: Portland Press Ltd
Received:
March 08 2020
Revision Received:
May 26 2020
Accepted:
May 27 2020
Online ISSN: 2397-8562
Print ISSN: 2397-8554
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society and the Royal Society of Biology
2020
Emerg Top Life Sci (2020) 4 (1): 33–43.
Article history
Received:
March 08 2020
Revision Received:
May 26 2020
Accepted:
May 27 2020
Citation
André Kessler, Alexander Chautá; The ecological consequences of herbivore-induced plant responses on plant–pollinator interactions. Emerg Top Life Sci 2 July 2020; 4 (1): 33–43. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/ETLS20190121
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Sign in to your personal account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Captcha Validation Error. Please try again.