SGER: Eavesdropping Between Plants

DEB-0121050 -Karban在过去的二十年里，生态学家已经认识到间接影响在许多社区中是广泛和重要的。 诱导抗性是一种间接效应，已经得到了大量的研究，尽管生态学家对植物-植物通讯作为诱导抗性的机制持怀疑态度。 事实上，大多数生态学家对植物之间交流的可能性持怀疑态度，因为早期关于这种现象的报道并不令人信服。 然而，我最近的实地调查表明，野生烟草植物“窃听”修剪山艾树邻居和诱导更高水平的抵抗他们共同的食草动物。 这种交流似乎是由山艾树释放的空气传播信号介导的，可能是茉莉酸甲酯。 这个建议提出了两个问题：1）窃听的普遍性如何？ 2)茉莉酸甲酯是空气传播的线索吗？ 如果窃听被证明是普遍的，那么植物群落内的相互作用范围可能比我们现在所认识的要丰富得多。 广泛的窃听表明，联想的抵抗力和敏感性以及一般的空间结构发挥了更大的作用。

DEB-0121050 - KarbanOver 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.