Inside the horn of plenty: Leaf-mining micromoth manipulates its host plant to obtain unending food provisioning.

ABSTRACT: Leaves represent the main resource for herbivorous insects and their performances are mainly a function of leaf nutritional quality. Two feeding strategies are known to optimize the exploitation of leaf resources: leaf-miners that selectively feed on tissues of high nutritional quality and gall-inducers that induce the development of a new tissue showing an enhanced nutritional value. Some leaf-miners are known to also manipulate their nutritional environment, but do not affect plant development. Cases of callus proliferation in leaf-mines have been reported, however, the direct role of the insect in the formation of additional plant cells and the nutritional function of this tissue have never been established. Using an experimental approach, we show that leaf-mining larvae of micromoth, B

SUBMITTER: Guiguet A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6303051 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature