Maternal effects occur when the phenotype or environment of a mother affects the phenotype of her offspring via some mechanism other than the transmission of genes. The primary objective of this review is to use examples from my own research on the interaction between seed beetles and their host plants to illustrate how maternal effects influence ecological interactions in nature. I explain how...

There is increasing evidence showing that microbes can influence plant-insect interactions. In addition, various studies have shown that aboveground pathogens can alter the interactions between plants and insects. However, little is known about the role of soil-borne pathogens in plant-insect interactions. It is also not known how environmental conditions, that steer the performance of soil-bor...

We review progress in understanding sequestration by herbivorous insects, the use of plant chemical defenses for their own defense. We incorporate sequestration into the framework of plant-insect coevolution by integrating three hierarchical issues: (1) the relationship between dietary specialization and sequestration of plant defenses, (2) the physiological mechanisms involved in sequestration...

BACKGROUND Surveys of host plants of insect galls have been performed in different regions of Brazil. The knowledge of species of host plants of insect galls is fundamental to further studies of plant-galling insect interactions. However, a list of host plant species of gall-inducing insects has not yet been compiled for the flora of the Midwest Region of Brazil. NEW INFORMATION We provide a ...

Early Jurassic fossil plants from sedimentary rocks of Tabbowa, Sri Lanka show a variety of evidence for plant-insect interactions indicative of a terrestrial habitat prevailed in the Gondwanaland. The observed interactions are skelitonizing, blotch and galls, ovipositions or coprolites, leaf mines and leaf chewing. These traces indicate that insects had associated the plants for various purpos...