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Plant-Insect Interactions

Calatayud PA, Sauvion N, Thiéry D, Rebaudo R, Jacquin-Joly E (2020) 

General Overview

Plant-insect interactions are classically viewed as mutualistic, antagonistic, or commensalistic. Mutualism is characterized by help between each partner, with both benefiting and neither harmed. Mutualisms include pollination (e.g., flowering plant/insect pollinator systems), plant guarding, or seed dispersal (e.g., plant/ant systems). In antagonistic relationships, one counterpart benefits and the other is harmed. This relationship includes phytophagy by insects (e.g., insect pests) but also insectivory by plants (e.g., carnivorous plants). In commensalism, one counterpart benefits but the other is not harmed (e.g., the commensal relationship of the Monarch butterfly larvae with certain species of milkweeds to store cardiac glycosides for defensive purposes).

The founders of the field of plant-insect interactions include Jean-Henri Fabre, one of the pioneers of insect behavior and ecophysiology as well as the study of chemical communication in insects (Fabre 1879). Charles Darwin was the first to highlight the coevolution process between insect and plant communities (Darwin 1899). Andrew D. Hopkins’s theory was the first to explain a mechanism of host plant fidelity in phytophagous insects (Hopkins 1916). Karl von Frisch was the first to describe sensorial perception in insects inside their environment, particularly in plants (von Frisch 1953). Several pioneering scientists pointed out the importance of plant chemistry to the establishment of such intimate relations (see Dethier 1941), and Snelling 1941 is the first work to define plants’ defense mechanisms against herbivorous insects.

In 1958, the late Jan de Wilde organized the first symposium on insect-plant interactions in Wageningen, The Netherlands. This timing of this symposium corresponded to the first issue of the well-known scientific journal Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata. At the same time, a pioneering paper, Fraenkel 1959, defined the role and importance of secondary plant metabolites in plant-insect interactions; and knowledge of the sensory physiology of the gustatory systems of insects took a big step forward with Schoonhoven and Dethier 1966, after incredibly sound research on insect olfaction by pioneering works such as Viallanes 1887, probably the first to study the antennal lobe structure in a hornet.

The first major scholars of plant-insect interactions in the early 21st century include May R. Berenbaumand and Art R. Zangerl at the University of Illinois, pioneers in chemical ecology of insect-plant interactions/detoxification of plant defenses/coevolution. Elizabeth (Liz) Bernays at Arizona University was considered one of the most influential scientists working on plant-herbivore interactions in the 1980s. Dame Miriam Rothschild was a classical example of a grand-old lady in caterpillar-plant interactions. Fritz and Simms 1992 is the first synthesis of plant-insect interactions.

Oxford Bibliographies, DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0193