Abstract
Plants typically release large quantities of volatiles in response to herbivory by insects. This benefits the plants by, for instance, attracting the natural enemies of the herbivores. We show that the brown planthopper (BPH) has cleverly turned this around by exploiting herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) that provide safe havens for its offspring. BPH females preferentially oviposit on rice plants already infested by the rice striped stem borer (SSB), which are avoided by the egg parasitoid Anagrus nilaparvatae, the most important natural enemy of BPH. Using synthetic versions of volatiles identified from plants infested by BPH and/or SSB, we demonstrate the role of HIPVs in these interactions. Moreover, greenhouse and field cage experiments confirm the adaptiveness of the BPH oviposition strategy, resulting in 80% lower parasitism rates of its eggs. Besides revealing a novel exploitation of HIPVs, these findings may lead to novel control strategies against an exceedingly important rice pest.
Highlights
In their natural environment, plants interact with complex insect communities consisting of numerous species and different trophic levels (Stam et al, 2014; Poelman and Dicke, 2014; Poelman, 2015)
When given a choice between uninfested rice and striped stem borer (SSB)-infested rice plants, the brown planthopper (BPH) females strongly preferred to settle on caterpillar-infested plants
BPH adult females laid significantly more eggs on caterpillar-infested rice plants than on uninfested plants (RT-test applied to a Generalized Linea Model (GLM), Piosson distribution error; all p
Summary
Plants interact with complex insect communities consisting of numerous species and different trophic levels (Stam et al, 2014; Poelman and Dicke, 2014; Poelman, 2015). HIPVs serve as cues for natural enemies, such as predators and parasitoids, to locate their prey or hosts (Dicke et al, 2009; Allison and Daniel Hare, 2009; Allmann and Baldwin, 2010; Halitschke et al, 2008; Turlings and Erb, 2018; Schuman and Baldwin, 2018; Joo et al, 2018) They play a role in repelling herbivores that avoid inducible plant defenses and conspecific or heterospecific competition (De Moraes et al, 2001; Knolhoff and Heckel, 2014; Anderson et al, 2011; Jiao et al, 2018) or they can attract specialist herbivores that aggregate to collectively overcome the defense of their hosts (Loughrin et al, 1995; Weed, 2010; Robert et al, 2012). HIPVs provide information to all players in a plant’s ecological network and through these various effects, HIPVs play a major role in determining the composition of insect communities in the field (Xiao et al, 2012; Zhu et al, 2015; Poelman and Dicke, 2014; Blubaugh et al, 2018; Schuman and Baldwin, 2018)
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