Abstract
Plants have developed various mechanisms to respond specifically to each biotrophic attack. It has been shown that the electrical signals emitted by plants are associated with herbivory stress responses and can lead to the activation of multiple defences. Bt cotton is a genetically modified pest-resistant plant that produces an insecticide from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to control Lepidopteran species. Surprisingly, there is no study–yet, that characterizes the signalling mechanisms in transgenic cotton plants attacked by non-target insects, such as aphids. In this study, we characterized the production of electrical signals on Bt and non-Bt cotton plants infested with Aphis gossypii and, in addition, we characterized the dispersal behaviour of aphids to correlate this behaviour to plant signalling responses. Electrical signalling of the plants was recorded with an extracellular measurement technique. Impressively, our results showed that both Bt and non-Bt cotton varieties, when attacked by A. gossypii, emitted potential variation-type electrical signals and clearly showed the presence of distinct responses regarding their perception and the behaviour of aphids, with evidence of delay, in terms of signal amount, and almost twice the amount of Cry1F protein was observed on Bt cotton plants at the highest density of insects/plant. We present in our article some hypotheses that are based on plant physiology and insect behaviour to explain the responses found on Bt cotton plants under aphid stress.
Highlights
An organism’s capacity to survive in an ecosystem depends on its ability to respond quickly and efficiently to external stimuli and to develop effective and sustainable defences [1]
The Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and non-Bt cotton plants infested with aphids emitted signals after 60 h of aphid infestation (Fig 2), while in cotton plants used as a control, the maximum signal emission values were observed at 55 and 57 h in non-Bt and Bt cotton plants, respectively (Fig 2)
The results from our study showed that both cotton varieties (Bt and non-Bt), when attacked by A. gossypii, emitted electrical signals of the variation potential type
Summary
An organism’s capacity to survive in an ecosystem depends on its ability to respond quickly and efficiently to external stimuli and to develop effective and sustainable defences [1]. For this reason, plants have developed numerous mechanisms to react to each biotrophic attack, and cell-to-cell communication between distant tissues is essential to coordinate activities in response to the environment. Plants need to produce a signalling mechanism to integrate perception, transmission, and response to biotic and abiotic actions that occur in the ecosystem [2,3,4,5]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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