REU: The Interaction of Insect Herbivory, Environmental Stress, and Host Resistance

北方亚利桑那州立大学的怀瑟姆博士将 继续研究生长在 北方亚利桑那州日落火山口的火山灰和火山灰场。 的 松树是水和养分的压力，虽然邻近的网站， 几乎不受食草动物的影响，受到压力的松树遭受了许多倍的痛苦， 增加了三种食草昆虫的攻击。 这种慢性和 急性草食性导致草食性介导的性别变化， 树，改变了树的结构，大大减少了增长。 五 研究的基本思路将继续：1.实验 操纵压力和食草动物负荷，以分离原因， 效果，2.量化的化学和/或遗传基础 抵抗力，3.量化昆虫植食性对 寄主的根、冠和生殖系统; 4.量化 寄主抗性对草食动物存活和种子的影响 分散，5。重建过去200年的慢性 昆虫攻击 6、多学科技能 研究人员，在检查这些方面取得了迅速进展， 问题通过采用昆虫转移实验，树 移植实验，补充水分和水分 实验，初级和次级植物生物化学， 树木年代学和电泳。 由于极端的 在遇到的环境条件下， 以及我们通过实验 操纵主要组件，系统代表一个模型， 整合植物-食草动物相互作用的主要因素。

Dr. Whitham of Northern Arizona State University will continue a study of pinyon pine, Pinus edulis, which grows on the ash and cinder fields of Northern Arizona's Sunset Crater. The pine is water and nutrient stressed, and although adjacent sites suffer little herbivory, stressed pinyons suffer many-fold increases in attack by 3 insect herbivores. This chronic and acute herbivory results in a herbivore-mediated sex change in the tree, altered tree architecture and greatly reduced growth. Five basic lines of research will be continued: 1. experimentally manipulate stress and herbivore loads to separate cause and effect, 2. quantify the chemical and/or genetic basis of resistance, 3. quantify the impacts of insect herbivory on the host's root, crown, and reproductive systems, 4. quantify the impacts of host resistance on herbivore survival and seed dispersal, and 5. reconstruct the past 200 years of chronic insect attack. With the multidisciplinary skills of 6 researchers, rapid progress has been made in examining these questions by employing insect transfer experiments, tree transplant experiments, supplemental water and fertilizing experiments, primary and secondary plant biochemistry, dendrochronology, and electrophoresis. Because of the extremes of environmental conditions encountered, the obvious impacts of herbivory on these plants and our ability to experimentally manipulate the major components, the system represents a model for integrating major factors in plant-herbivore interactions.