Tomato's dissociation: releasing chemicals to induce pests to fight in the same room

Tomatoes may be the least threatening plant for pests However, John orrock's team at the University of Wisconsin Madison (UW Madison) found that tomatoes have a special chemical defense mechanism that makes them a "forbidden area" for caterpillars In order to resist natural enemies, plants have evolved a variety of defense skills Some plants have spines, some grow in inaccessible places, and some feed on insects through metamorphosed leaves And some plants can release chemicals to affect or change the behavior of some herbivores When these plants sense the arrival of pests, they release chemicals that make them hard to swallow In the case of poor or insufficient food quality, herbivores tend to attack the same kind of pests But scientists have been uncertain whether plants can directly allow pests to attack the same species Tomato induced chemical defense leads to an increase in cannibalism among herbivores (source: Nature Ecology & Evolution) To test this hypothesis, John orrock's team exposed tomato plants to low, medium and high concentrations of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) to trigger their defense response This chemical is released by plants and spread in the air It is an alarm for each other's pest attack Under the stimulation of MeJA, tomato plants produce toxins, reducing their nutritional value to pests The researchers of methyl jasmonate (source: Wikipedia) put 8 caterpillars of Spodoptera exigua, a common pest, into each tomato container to attack the plant, and counted the number of remaining caterpillars in the container every day, and checked the damage degree of the plant after 8 days After eight days, they found that the plants that were more affected by MeJA were less damaged than those in the control group or those spraying a small amount of MeJA This proves that methyl jasmonate does have multiple defense ability against pests For plants, it not only kills pests, but also protects themselves Orrock said that the plant's chemical defense mechanism can speed up the insect's encroachment on the same species, which provides farmers with a new pest control scheme Good use will make more plants free from pests They will also do more research on plant chemical defense to help the development of chemical pesticides and pest control Thesis link: https://