Plant defenses that respond to the threat of herbivory require accurate sensing of the presence of herbivores. Herbivory cues include mechanical damage, elicitors from insect saliva or eggs, and airborne volatiles emitted by wounded plants. Plants can also respond to the leaf vibrations produced by chewing herbivores. However, previous studies of the influence of feeding vibrations on plant defenses have been limited to single species pairs. In this study we test the hypothesis that chewing vibrations differ among herbivore species, both in their acoustic features and in their potential effect on plant defense responses. We first compare the acoustic traits of larval feeding vibrations in ten species from six families of Lepidoptera and one family of Hymenoptera. We then test responses of Arabidopsis thaliana plants to variation among feeding vibrations of different individuals of one species, and to feeding vibrations of two species, including a pierid butterfly and a noctuid moth. All feeding vibrations consisted of repetitive pulses of vibration associated with leaf tissue removal, although chewing rates varied between species and between large and small individuals within species. The frequency spectra of the vibrations generated by leaf feeding were similar across all ten species. Induced increases in anthocyanins in A. thaliana did not differ when plants were played vibrations from different individuals, or vibrations of two species of herbivores with different chewing rates, when amplitude was held constant. These results suggest that feeding vibrations provide a consistent set of cues for plant recognition of herbivores.

对草食动物威胁做出反应的植物防御需要准确感测草食动物的存在。食草线索包括机械损伤，昆虫唾液或卵引起的诱饵以及受伤植物散发的空气挥发物。植物还可以响应咀嚼草食动物产生的叶片振动。但是，先前关于进料振动对植物防御的影响的研究仅限于单个物种对。在这项研究中，我们检验了以下假说：食草动物物种的咀嚼振动在声学特征和对植物防御反应的潜在影响方面均不同。我们首先比较六个鳞翅目和一个膜翅目的十个物种的幼虫进食振动的声学特性。然后，我们测试拟南芥的响应植物会在一种物种的不同个体的进食振动之间发生变化，并在两种物种的进食振动之间发生变化，包括皮蝶和夜蛾。所有的进食振动都包括与叶片组织去除相关的重复振动脉冲，尽管咀嚼速率在物种之间以及物种内大小个体之间变化。在所有十个物种中，叶片喂食产生的振动的频谱相似。拟南芥中花色苷的诱导增加当振幅保持恒定时，当植物受到不同个体的振动，或两种食草动物具有不同咀嚼率的振动时，它们的差异没有变化。这些结果表明，进料振动为植物识别草食动物提供了一致的线索。