Studies that provide estimates of the form and magnitude of selection on herbivore traits at the level of individual plants in natural populations represent a vital step in understanding the interaction of selection and gene flow among host-affiliated insect populations when individual plants equate to differing selective regimes. We analyzed phenotypic selection on the trait gall size for a ho...

The sweetpotato whitefly (WF), Bemisia tabaci, is a major pest that damages a wide range of vegetable crops in Malaysia. WF infestation is influenced by a variety of factors, including previous infestation of the host plant by other insect pests. This study investigated the effects of previous infestation of host chilli plants by the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae) on the olfactory behaviour...

Verticillium wilt, caused by soil-borne fungi of the genus Verticillium, is an economically important disease that affects a wide range of host plants. Unfortunately, host resistance against Verticillium wilts is not available for many plant species, and the disease is notoriously difficult to combat. Host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) is an RNA interference (RNAi)-based process in which small ...

Host shifts by herbivorous insects have contributed substantially to current patterns of association between insects and plants. Despite their evolutionary and agricultural interest, however, the plant traits that predispose insects to colonize some plants instead of others are poorly understood. To examine whether ancestral and novel hosts share similar chemical oviposition stimulants that wou...

Recent research on the treehopper tribe Telamonini has focused on their classification and Nearctic distribution but little has been published on their biology, including detailed information on their host plants as well as data on their nymphal stage. Any studies including host plant data have emphasized adult records (often unreliable due to their movements), largely ignoring the nymphs, whic...

Humans are altering the global distributional ranges of plants, while their co-evolved herbivores are frequently left behind. Native herbivores often colonise non-native plants, potentially reducing invasion success or causing economic loss to introduced agricultural crops. We developed a predictive model to forecast novel interactions and verified it with a data set containing hundreds of obse...

To examine the mediation of host–predator interaction by a parasite, we studied the three-level interactions among a host plant, a root hemiparasitic plant, and their common predator, a generalist snail herbivore. The host species, Trifolium repens, is able to synthesize cyanogenic glucosides that have a significant role in plant herbivore resistance. Some T. repens populations are polymorphic ...

The expression of cauliflower mosaic virus proteins was examined in crown gall tissue transformed by integration of virus genome DNA into plant host chromosomes by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transfer. Galls upon plants of species that support infection by virus particles as well as upon non-host plants were analysed by immunoblotting using antisera specific to proteins encoded by viral ...

we investigated the relations among infection intensity of european mistletoe (viscum album l.) with host tree features in nour forest park, located in caspian forests in north of iran. the number of 30 circular plots with an area of 0.1 ha were sampled in all places have an aggregation of infested trees. parameters including dbh, height, distance to stand edge, distance to conspecific tree, ba...