RUI: Testing the Limiting Resource Model of Plant Tolerance of Herbivory

解释和预测食草动物对寄主植物的影响是生态学家、进化生物学家和农学家的主要目标。植物生长的环境条件显然会影响它对食草动物破坏的耐受性，但目前预测这种环境影响方向的模型无法解释目前可用的实验结果的多样性。这项研究将开发和测试一种新的模型(限制资源模型)，该模型明确考虑不同类型的草食动物影响哪些资源，以及哪些资源限制植物的适应性。这项研究使用一枝黄花和三种昆虫在不同的光照和无机营养水平下进行了温室实验。这项研究不仅有助于在三十多年来对黄花-天敌模型系统研究的基础上，还将促进对自然界食草性动物的生态影响的理解，并将为植物防御进化的一般理论提供信息。有关影响耐受性的因素的知识可以应用于农作物，以提高它们对草食动物损害的耐受性，从而减少对杀虫剂的需求。同样，降低植物对草食的耐受性的条件知识也可以通过为生物防治计划的设计提供信息来对抗入侵的杂草。

Explaining and predicting the impact that herbivores have on their host plants is a major goal of ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and agronomists. The environmental conditions in which a plant grows clearly affect how it tolerates damage by herbivores, but current models predicting the direction of this environmental effect fall short of explaining the diversity of empirical results now available. This research will develop and test a new model (the Limiting Resource Model) that explicitly considers which resources different types of herbivores affect and which resources are limiting a plant's fitness. The research involves greenhouse experiments using Solidago altissima (tall goldenrod) and three species of insects under varying light and inorganic nutrient levels. This research will not only help build upon the thirty-plus years of research on the goldenrod-natural enemy model system, but it will advance understanding of the ecological impacts of herbivory in nature and will inform general theories of plant-defense evolution. Knowledge about the factors that affect tolerance can be applied to crop plants to enhance their tolerance of herbivore damage, thus reducing the need for pesticides. Likewise the knowledge of conditions that decrease plants' tolerance of herbivory can be used against invasive weeds by informing the design of biological control programs.