Plant species, and their interactions with the environment, determine both the quantity and chemistry of organic matter inputs to soils. Indeed, countless studies have linked the quality of organic matter inputs to litter decomposition rates. However, few studies have examined how variation in the quantity and chemistry of plant inputs, caused by either interspecific differences or changing env...

1 National Institute of Crop Science, Tsukuba, Japan 2 Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben, Germany 3 Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China 4 Enzyme and Protein Chemistry, Department of Systems Biology, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark *Corres...

Black vine weevils, Otiorhynchus sulcatus (Fabricius) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), are globally-distributed polyphagous pests of many horticultural crops. We investigated how adult weevils were affected by host switching and, in particular, how host plant species nutritional and defensive chemistry affected subsequent host plant species selection and oviposition. Adults were fed one of three ho...

In recent time there is an increase in global utilization of herbal medicine in the treatment of various decease affecting human. The highly safety profile and low cost of herbal medicines have been reported as the major factors responsible for the increased upsurge in herbal medication. The subject of the phytochemical analysis, phytochemistry or plant chemistry has developed in recent years a...

Butterflies in the tribe Melitaeini (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) are known to utilize host plants belonging to 16 families, although most host-plant records are from four families. Of the 16 host-plant families, 12 produce secondary plant metabolites called iridoids. Earlier studies have shown that larvae of several melitaeine species use iridoids as feeding stimulants and sequester these compoun...

Slobodan Milosavljević, Dragoslav Jeremić and Slobodan Macura Department of Chemistry and Ph1Jsicat Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Studentski trg 16, P.O.Box 550, 11001Belgrade, Yugoslavia and Vlatka Vajs Institute for Chemistry, TechnologlI and Metallurgy, Belgrade Received April lO, 1985 Identification of a novel diterpene (la-hydroxy-7a,l1a,14~-triacetoxy-L\B(gJ.15_pimaric a id methyl ester)...

From the Department of Plant Physiology and Umeå Plant Science Centre, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, SLU, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden Biochemistry and Physiology of Plants, Faculty of Biology, W5, Bielefeld University, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany Department of Chemistry, Center of Chemical Biology and Computational...

The relationship of plant secondary chemistry, water content, and nutrient content to the palatability of leaves to the leafcutting ant Atta cephalotes was determined in a study of individuals from 50 woody plant species in tropical dry forest of Costa Rica. The study took place during the yearly period of maximum leaf harvest, in the early rainy season. The palatability of plants was determine...

The effects of leaf toughness, trichome characteristics, nutrient and water availability, and secondary chemistry on diet selection by the leafcutting ant Atta cephalotes were determined using individuals of 49 woody plant species from a tropical deciduous forest in Costa Rica. The palatability of plants was measured by presenting whole leaves to leafcutting ant foragers on trails and counting ...

Eyal Shimoni,a Ophir Rav-Hon,b Itzhak Ohad,c Vlad Brumfeld,d and Ziv Reichb1 a Electron Microscopy Unit, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel b Department of Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel c Department of Biological Chemistry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel d Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of ...