Plants respond to damage by herbivores or to reliable cues of damage by changing in ways that provide greater resistance and increase their fitness. Sagebrush has been a model system for understanding induced resistance, although resistance in this system is commonly assessed by quantifying damage at the end of the season; this measure is slow and lacks accuracy and interpretability because so many other factors also affect levels of damage. Herbivore choice offers a potentially rapid and accurate alternative assay of induced resistance. Here we evaluate whether feeding behavior of a specialized Chrysomelid beetle, Trirhabda pilosa, could be used to assay induced changes in plant quality. Beetle larvae were offered the choice between two leaves in Petri dish arenas. We found that beetles avoided leaves that were naturally damaged by herbivores, experimentally clipped with scissors, and exposed to the volatiles from naturally or experimentally damaged neighboring leaves compared to control leaves. Experiments varied the source of the damage, the duration of the feeding test, and how damage was measured, still, beetles consistently preferred uninduced controls by a 2:1 ratio over leaves exposed to cues of damage. These results suggest that behavioral assays using T. pilosa larvae can be used to rapidly evaluate induced resistance in this system. More generally, movement and feeding behaviors of herbivores are an important and underappreciated component of induced plant responses.

中文翻译：

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使用鼠尾草专家Trirhabda pilosa评估鼠尾草的植物间交流和诱导抗性

植物通过改变食草动物的危害或可靠的危害提示，通过改变方式来提供更大的抗性并提高其适应性。鼠尾草已成为理解诱导抗性的模型系统，尽管该系统中的抗性通常通过在赛季结束时量化损失来评估。这种措施很慢，缺乏准确性和可解释性，因为还有许多其他因素也会影响损害程度。草食动物的选择提供了一种潜在的快速而准确的诱导抗性测定方法。在这里，我们评估是否有专门的金龟子甲虫Trirhabda pilosa的进食行为，可用于分析植物品质的诱导变化。在培养皿中，甲虫幼虫可在两片叶子之间进行选择。我们发现，与对照叶相比，甲虫避免了被食草动物自然破坏，用剪刀剪掉并暴露于自然或实验破坏的邻近叶片的挥发物的叶片。实验改变了伤害的来源，进食测试的持续时间以及如何测量伤害，但是，与暴露于伤害线索的叶子相比，甲虫始终以2：1的比例始终首选未诱导的对照。这些结果表明，使用T. pilosa进行行为分析幼虫可用于快速评估该系统中的诱导抗性。更一般而言，草食动物的移动和进食行为是诱导植物反应的重要且未被充分认识的组成部分。