SGER: Eavesdropping Between Plants

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

DEB-0121050 - Karban Over the past two decades ecologists have come to recognize that indirect effects are widespread and important in many communities. Induced resistance represents one type of indirect effect that has received a lot of study, although ecologists are very skeptical about plant-plant communication as a mechanism for induced resistance. In fact, most ecologists discount the possibility of communication between plants because early reports of this phenomenon were not convincing. However, my recent fieldwork suggests that wild tobacco plants "eavesdrop" on clipped sagebrush neighbors and induce higher levels of resistance to their shared herbivores. This communication appears to be mediated by an airborne cue released by sagebrush, perhaps methyl jasmonate. This proposal asks two questions: 1) How general is eavesdropping? 2) Is methyl jasmonate the airborne cue? If eavesdropping proves to be widespread then the spectrum of interactions within plant communities may be much richer than we now appreciate. Widespread eavesdropping suggests a much greater role for associational resistance and susceptibility, and for spatial structure in general.