Whitefly adaptation to and manipulation of plant resistance

摘要

Insect herbivores resemble one of the most significant biotic stresses to plants in natural and agricultural ecosystems, due to their high diversity and abundance (Wu and Baldwin, 2010). In the long-term coexistence between plants and insect herbivores, plants have evolved a diverse array of defense machineries to fend off attacks from insect herbivores; similarly, insect herbivores have evolved various strategies to mitigate and adapt to plant defense machineries to sustain their own survival. Plant resistance traits such as physical barriers and toxic chemicals may hinder the feeding of insect herbivores. And many plant resistance traits are controlled by plant hormone pathways (Erb and Reymond, 2019). Dissecting how insect herbivores respond and adapt to the hostile environment imposed by their host plants may contribute to a better understanding of insect-plant interactions, and more importantly offer targets for the management of these insect herbivores.