Recent studies on plants genetically modified in jasmonic acid (JA) signalling support the hypothesis that the jasmonate family of oxylipins plays an important role in mediating direct and indirect plant defences. However, the interaction of two modes of defence in tritrophic systems is largely unknown. In this study, we examined the preference and performance of a herbivorous leafminer (Liriom...

The synchronous behaviour of interacting communities is studied in this paper. Each community is described by a tritrophic food chain model, and the communities interact through a network with arbitrary topology, composed of patches and migration corridors. The analysis of the local synchronization properties (via the master stability function approach) shows that, if only one species can migra...

The oscillatory tendency of consumer-resource interactions is a key determinant of food-web persistence. Here, we develop a metric for quantifying oscillatory tendency that scales the positive feedback effects of saturating functional responses with the negative feedback effects of self-limitation. We use this metric to predict the oscillatory tendency of a pairwise interaction, tritrophic chai...

Tachinidae are one of the most diverse and ecologically important families in the order Diptera. As parasitoids, they are important natural enemies in most terrestrial ecological communities, particularly as natural enemies of larval Lepidoptera. Despite their diversity and ecological impact, relatively little is known about the evolution and ecology of tachinids, and what is known tends to be ...

1. Trade-offs in an herbivore’s ability to feed, avoid predation and succeed on alternative hosts are thought to be major driving factors in host specialization. In this study, we compared how two closely related milkweed beetles (Tetraopes spp.) that have specialized on separate Asclepias species respond to host switching to alternative milkweed plants. By additionally examining effects on the...