Reduced Responsiveness to Volatile Signals Creates a Modular Reward Provisioning in an Obligate Food-for-Protection Mutualism.

ABSTRACT: Plants in more than 100 families secrete extrafloral nectar (EFN) to establish food-for-protection mutualisms with ants. Facultative ant-plants secrete EFN as a jasmonic acid (JA)-dependent response to attract generalist ants. In contrast, obligate ant-plants like the Central American "Swollen-Thorn Acacias" are colonized by specialized ants, although an individual host can carry ant colonies from different species that differ in the degree of protection they provide. We hypothesized that hosts that associate simultaneously with various partners should produce rewards in a modular manner to preferentially reward high quality partners. To test this hypothesis, we applied JA to distinct leaves and quantified cell wall invertase activity (CWIN; a regulator of nectar secretion) and EFN secreti

SUBMITTER: Hernandez-Zepeda OF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6066664 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature