Field Experiments on Common Milkweed Support Hypothesized Synergies Between Plant Defense Traits

Growth–defense tradeoffs for two major anti-herbivore traits of the common milkweed Asclepias syriaca

Costs of plant defense are a key assumption in evolutionary ecology, yet their detection has remained challenging. Here we introduce a novel method for quantifying plant growth using the common milkweed Asclepias syriaca and repeated non-destructive size measurements to experimentally test for costs of defensive traits. We estimated mechanistic components of plant growth (relative growth rate, ...

Tests of the coupled expression of latex and cardenolide plant defense in common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)

The coexpression of plant resistance traits suggests the hypothesis that they may have complementary functions in defense against herbivory. To address the extent to which defensive traits are necessarily coupled in plants grown under various conditions, we focused on latex and cardenolides, two potent defenses of milkweeds. We measured defenses across ontogenetic stages, different biotic and a...

Workshop on Synergies between Field Theory

Prospects and synergies between future atmospheric and long-baseline experiments

In this talk we will discuss the physics reach of the atmospheric neutrino data collected by a future megaton-class neutrino detector. First we will discuss the potentialities of atmospheric neutrinos on general basis, presenting our results in the form of neutrino oscillograms of the Earth: contour plots in the neutrino energy–nadir angle plane. In this context we will analyze in detail the va...

Plant defense against herbivory: progress in identifying synergism, redundancy, and antagonism between resistance traits.

Plants respond to herbivore attack through a complex and variable system of defense, involving different physical barriers, toxic chemicals, and recruitment of natural enemies. To fully understand the relative role of each type of defense, their synergisms, redundancies, or antagonisms between traits, a variety of methods of enquiry, commonly used in plant physiology and ecology, have been empl...