Species-specific, accession-specific, and common responses of foliar phytohormones and morphological traits to drought and herbivory.
Xiao X, Aragam KS, Bräutigam A, Dussarrat T, Gaar S
Plant Signaling
Tansy, bittersweet nightshade, and black poplar each mount a chemically distinct defense when bugs and dry spells hit together — which means the mixed-stress summers ahead won't hit your garden's plants the same way, and resilience will depend heavily on which species (and which seed source) you're growing.
Researchers stressed three very different plants — a wildflower (tansy), a climbing berry shrub (bittersweet nightshade), and a tree (black poplar) — with drought, caterpillar feeding, or both at once. Each plant used a different set of internal chemical messengers to respond, and the combined stress always hit hardest. Despite all those differences, a handful of chemical signals fired up the same way in all three plants, suggesting some defenses are ancient and shared across the plant kingdom.
Key Findings
Combined drought + herbivory triggered the strongest responses in all three species, with tansy showing the greatest reduction in aboveground biomass under combined stress.
Salicylic acid induction under combined stress was unique to black poplar, while jasmonoyl-isoleucine, abscisic acid, and indole acetic acid were universally induced across all three species in response to herbivory, drought, and combined treatment respectively.
No single phytohormone or morphological trait showed uniform plasticity across all three species, but root mass remained stable in all species regardless of treatment.
chevron_right Technical Summary
When plants face drought and insect attack at the same time, they respond more strongly than to either stress alone — and those responses differ significantly between species and even between populations of the same species. A few chemical signals, however, appear universally across all three plants studied.
Abstract Preview
Plants are exposed to various environmental challenges. Especially with ongoing climate change, droughts and insect outbreaks are expected to become more frequent. Plant responses to these challeng...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Urban Tree Canopy Reduces Heat-Related Mortality by 39% in European Cities
Trees in your local park or street aren't just pretty — they are literally keeping people alive during heatwaves, and planting even a modest number of the ri...
Tansy is a perennial, herbaceous flowering plant in the genus Tanacetum in the aster family, native to temperate Europe and Asia. It has been introduced to other parts of the world, including North America, and in some areas has become invasive. It is also known as common tansy, bitter buttons, c...