Phenotypic flexibility of plants and adaptive dynamics of specialist-generalist insects

摘要

Host plant flexibility resulting in intraspecific variation enables plants to assure the most adaptive phenotype in a particular environment, significantly altering the performance and fitness of phytophagous insects. The structural diversity of plant over time has created a selection process leading to behavioural and biochemical adaptations resulting in specialist and generalist insects. With host plant populations comprising phenotypically heterogenous individuals, insects have the potential to adapt to an individual plant's chemical profile. The potential role played by plant signals in modulating and inducing the biosynthesis of many secondary metabolites has become an important aspect of insect-plant interactions which have relevance in agriculture. [References: 40]