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Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol

BACKGROUND: Plant volatiles play an important role in defending plants against insect attacks by attracting their natural enemies. For example, green leaf volatiles (GLVs) and terpenoids emitted from herbivore-damaged plants were found to be important in the host location of parasitic wasps. However...

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Autores principales: Wei, Jianing, Wang, Lizhong, Zhu, Junwei, Zhang, Sufang, Nandi, Owi I., Kang, Le
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1955833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17786223
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000852
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author Wei, Jianing
Wang, Lizhong
Zhu, Junwei
Zhang, Sufang
Nandi, Owi I.
Kang, Le
author_facet Wei, Jianing
Wang, Lizhong
Zhu, Junwei
Zhang, Sufang
Nandi, Owi I.
Kang, Le
author_sort Wei, Jianing
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Plant volatiles play an important role in defending plants against insect attacks by attracting their natural enemies. For example, green leaf volatiles (GLVs) and terpenoids emitted from herbivore-damaged plants were found to be important in the host location of parasitic wasps. However, evidence of the functional roles and mechanisms of these semio-chemicals from a system of multiple plants in prey location by the parasitoid is limited. Little is known about the potential evolutionary trends between herbivore-induced host plant volatiles and the host location of their parasitoids. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The present study includes hierarchical cluster analyses of plant volatile profiles from seven families of host and non-host plants of pea leafminer, Liriomyza huidobrensis, and behavioral responses of a naive parasitic wasp, Opius dissitus, to some principal volatile compounds. Here we show that plants can effectively pull wasps, O. dissitus, towards them by releasing a universally induced compound, (Z)-3-hexenol, and potentially keep these plants safe from parasitic assaults by leafminer pests, L. huidobrensis. Specifically, we found that volatile profiles from healthy plants revealed a partly phylogenetic signal, while the inducible compounds of the infested-plants did not result from the fact that the induced plant volatiles dominate most of the volatile blends of the host and non-host plants of the leafminer pests. We further show that the parasitoids are capable of distinguishing the damaged host plant from the non-host plant of the leafminers. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest that, as the most passive scenario of plant involvement, leafminers and mechanical damages evoke similar semio-chemicals. Using ubiquitous compounds, such as hexenol, for host location by general parasitoids could be an adaptation of the most conservative evolution of tritrophic interaction. Although for this, other compounds may be used to improve the precision of the host location by the parasitoids.
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spelling pubmed-19558332007-09-05 Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol Wei, Jianing Wang, Lizhong Zhu, Junwei Zhang, Sufang Nandi, Owi I. Kang, Le PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Plant volatiles play an important role in defending plants against insect attacks by attracting their natural enemies. For example, green leaf volatiles (GLVs) and terpenoids emitted from herbivore-damaged plants were found to be important in the host location of parasitic wasps. However, evidence of the functional roles and mechanisms of these semio-chemicals from a system of multiple plants in prey location by the parasitoid is limited. Little is known about the potential evolutionary trends between herbivore-induced host plant volatiles and the host location of their parasitoids. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The present study includes hierarchical cluster analyses of plant volatile profiles from seven families of host and non-host plants of pea leafminer, Liriomyza huidobrensis, and behavioral responses of a naive parasitic wasp, Opius dissitus, to some principal volatile compounds. Here we show that plants can effectively pull wasps, O. dissitus, towards them by releasing a universally induced compound, (Z)-3-hexenol, and potentially keep these plants safe from parasitic assaults by leafminer pests, L. huidobrensis. Specifically, we found that volatile profiles from healthy plants revealed a partly phylogenetic signal, while the inducible compounds of the infested-plants did not result from the fact that the induced plant volatiles dominate most of the volatile blends of the host and non-host plants of the leafminer pests. We further show that the parasitoids are capable of distinguishing the damaged host plant from the non-host plant of the leafminers. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest that, as the most passive scenario of plant involvement, leafminers and mechanical damages evoke similar semio-chemicals. Using ubiquitous compounds, such as hexenol, for host location by general parasitoids could be an adaptation of the most conservative evolution of tritrophic interaction. Although for this, other compounds may be used to improve the precision of the host location by the parasitoids. Public Library of Science 2007-09-05 /pmc/articles/PMC1955833/ /pubmed/17786223 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000852 Text en Wei et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Wei, Jianing
Wang, Lizhong
Zhu, Junwei
Zhang, Sufang
Nandi, Owi I.
Kang, Le
Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol
title Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol
title_full Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol
title_fullStr Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol
title_full_unstemmed Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol
title_short Plants Attract Parasitic Wasps to Defend Themselves against Insect Pests by Releasing Hexenol
title_sort plants attract parasitic wasps to defend themselves against insect pests by releasing hexenol
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1955833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17786223
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000852
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