Information arms race explains plant-herbivore chemical communication in ecological communities
- Zu, Pengjuan ORCID Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
- Boege, Karina ORCID Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510 Ciudad de México, México.
- del-Val, Ek ORCID Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad, Unidad Morelia Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 58190 Morelia, Michoacán, México.
- Schuman, Meredith C. Departments of Chemistry and Geography, University of Zurich, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
- Stevenson, Philip C. ORCID Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Chatham, Kent ME4 4TB, UK.
- Zaldivar-Riverón, Alejandro ORCID Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510 Ciudad de México, México.
- Saavedra, Serguei ORCID Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
- 2020-6-18
Published in:
- Science. - American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 2020, vol. 368, no. 6497, p. 1377-1381
English
Plants emit an extraordinary diversity of chemicals that provide information about their identity and mediate their interactions with insects. However, most studies of this have focused on a few model species in controlled environments, limiting our capacity to understand plant-insect chemical communication in ecological communities. Here, by integrating information theory with ecological and evolutionary theories, we show that a stable information structure of plant volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can emerge from a conflicting information process between plants and herbivores. We corroborate this information “arms race” theory with field data recording plant-VOC associations and plant-herbivore interactions in a tropical dry forest. We reveal that plant VOC redundancy and herbivore specialization can be explained by a conflicting information transfer. Information-based communication approaches can increase our understanding of species interactions across trophic levels.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- green
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1126/science.aba2965
- ISSN 0036-8075
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/203874
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