Abstract
Herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) are clues that help predatory insects search for food. The hypothesis that entomopathogenic fungi, which protect plants, benefit from the release of HIPVs was tested. The plant Arabidopsis thaliana was used as the source of HIPVs. The insect herbivore Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach) was used as the inducer, and the fungal pathogen of the aphid Lecanicillium lecanii was exposed to HIPVs to test our hypothesis. When exposed to aphid-induced A. thaliana volatiles, the mortality of aphids pre-treated with a conidial suspension of L. lecanii, the conidial germination and the appressorial formation were significantly increased compared with the control. The decan-3-ol and 4-methylpentyl isothiocyanate that were detected in the headspace seemed to have positive and negative affection, respectively. Moreover, HIPVs generated from groups of eight aphids per plant promoted significantly increased conidial germination and appressorial formation compared with HIPVs from groups of one, two and four aphids per plant. Our results demonstrated that the pathogenicity of the entomopathogenic fungus L. lecanii was enhanced when exposed to HIPVs and that the HIPVs were affected by the number of insect herbivores that induced them.
Highlights
Most plants produce toxic compounds and emit herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) for protection when attacked by various insect herbivores [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
We investigated two systems: 1) the HIPV emitting system in which the volatiles were induced by aphids feeding on A. thaliana plants and 2) an entomopathogenic fungal infection system in which the aphid was treated with Lecanicillium lecanii prior to exposure to the aphid-induced HIPVs [40,41]
HIPVs were induced by aphids feeding on a plant, and the volatiles were exposed to contaminated adult aphids that acquired conidia of entomopathogenic fungi
Summary
Most plants produce toxic compounds and emit herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) for protection when attacked by various insect herbivores [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. As an indirect defensive strategy of the plant, HIPVs can “alert enemies of insect herbivores for help” [7,8,9]. Some of the compounds emitted as HIPVs that attract or impact predator behavior have been chemically separated and analyzed in several studies. The predatory mite Neoseiulus womersleyi exhibited a significant preference for a mixture of three compounds [(E)-β-ocimene, (E)4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene, and (E,E)-α-farnesene] in tea leaves [10], whereas tachinid flies.
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