Plant size and reproductive state affect the quantity and quality of rewards to animal mutualists

摘要

Plants face varying pressures from herbivores as they progress through their life cycle. A large body of work has examined the ontogeny of plant defence and the ways in which it is shaped by stage- or size-speci?c selection by herbivores (reviewed in Boege & Marquis 2005; Barton & Koricheva 2010). Examining ontogenetic variation in defence can inform understanding of how plants resolve optimality problems associated with allocation to growth and defence over the life.