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Video Q&A ViewAttendees 2

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Student Competition 10-Minute Paper

Undergrad P-IE: Biodiversity, Biocontrol, and Resistance On-Demand Presentations

Domestication enhances belowground plant tolerance to aboveground herbivory

On-Demand
Student Competition On-Demand
Plants employ various strategies to tolerate or deter insect herbivore damage, including defenses that suppress insect-herbivore populations. Alternatively, plant tolerance to herbivory does not reduce insect-herbivore populations but rather, diminishes negative impacts on plant fitness, most often through regrowth or enhanced reproduction. This compensation in response to herbivory can alter above- and belowground plant growth and fecundity. Typically, compensation traits are passed from parent to offspring and are conserved across genetically similar plants. However, little is known about how plant domestication affects tolerance in domesticated Cucurbits compared to their wild ancestors. To investigate this, we determined how two Cucurbita species, wild buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) and domesticated zucchini squash (Cucurbita pepo), respond to feeding by a specialist insect herbivore, squash bug (Anasa tristis). We investigated our objective in a laboratory setting by conducting separate plant tolerance assays for buffalo gourd and zucchini squash. For each plant species, we established two treatment groups: undamaged plants and squash bug-damaged plants. Following a week of squash bug feeding, we measured biomass and growth to determine differences in plant tolerance across species. Overall, aboveground squash bug feeding decreased belowground root biomass accumulation in buffalo gourd, but not zucchini squash. In contrast, we found no differences between species in aboveground compensation following squash bug herbivory. Our findings suggest domestication enhanced plant tolerance in non-attacked root tissue, implying domesticated species utilize different strategies to combat herbivory than wild ancestors. Our study highlights how domestication can alter plant responses to herbivory.