Defensive (Anti-Herbivory) Coloration in Land Plants

ISBN-13: 9783319824970 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 385 str.

Simcha Lev-Yadun

Spis treści

Part I - General background

Chapter 1.    Introduction

Chapter 2.    Plants are not sitting ducks waiting for herbivores to eat them

Chapter 3.    The many defensive mechanisms of plants

Chapter 4.    No defense is perfect and defense is always relative

Chapter 5.    Operating under stress and fear in the military as a lesson concerning difficulties for herbivory in nature. Factors that lower the need for perfect defensive mechanisms including            mimicry

Chapter 6.    Evaluating risk: the problematic and even erroneous common view of "no damage or no attack equals no risk"

Chapter 7.    Partial descriptions of color patterns in floras and handbooks has consequences on the study of plant coloration biology

Chapter 8.    Animal color vision

Chapter 9.    The nature of signals

Chapter 10.  White as a visual signal

Chapter 11.  Visual signaling by plants to animals via color

Chapter 12.  Müllerian and Batesian mimics are extended phenotypes

Part II - Gentle defenses

Chapter 13.  Camouflage

Chapter 14.  Seed camouflage

Chapter 15.  Pod and seed camouflage in the genus Pisum

Chapter 16.  Defensive functions of white coloration in coastal and dune plants

Chapter 17.  Gloger's rule in plants: the species and ecosystem levels

Chapter 18.  Defensive masquerade by plants

Chapter 19.  Potential defense from herbivory by dazzle effects and trickery coloration of variegated leaves

Chapter 20.  Plants undermine herbirorous insect camouflage 

Chapter 21.  Delayed greening

Chapter 22.  Red/purple leaf margin coloration: potential defensive functions

Part III - Aggressive defenses

Chapter 23.  Aposematism

Chapter 24.  Olfactory aposematism

Chapter 25.  The anecdotal history of discussing plant aposematic coloration

Chapter 26.  Aposematic coloration in thorny, spiny and prickly plants

Chapter 27.  Fearful symmetry in aposematic spiny plants

Chapter 28.  Color changes in old aposematic thorns, spines, and prickles

Chapter 29.  Pathogenic bacteria and fungi on thorns, spines and prickles

Chapter 30.  Aposematism in plants with silica needles and raphids made of calcium oxalate

Chapter 31.  Müllerian and Batesian mimicry rings of aposematic thorny, spiny and toxic plants

Chapter 32.  Batesian mimicry and automimicry of aposematic thorns, spines and prickles

O autorze

Prof. Simcha Lev-Yadun

Department of Biology and Environment,

Faculty of Natural Sciences,

University of Haifa- Oranim, 

Tivon 36006 

Israel

Major Research Interests: 

The beginning of agriculture: The biology and genetics of plant‎‎ domestication.‎

The ecology and evolution of defensive vegetative coloration in plants.‎

Developmental processes in plants: meristematic activity and its ecology‎‎ and regulation, fate of apical meristems, homeosis, pattern formation.

Arabidopsis thaliana as a model for the biology of trees.‎

Biology and ecology of trees and other woody plants.‎

Palaeoecology: Dendrochronology, identification of botanical material‎‎ from archaeological excavations, reconstruction of palaeoenvironments.‎

Blurb

This book presents visual plant defenses (camouflage, mimicry and aposematism via coloration, morphology and even movement) against herbivores. It is mainly an ideological monograph, a manifesto representing my current understanding on defensive plant coloration and related issues. The book is not the final word in anything, but rather the beginning of many things. It aims to establish visual anti-herbivory defense as an integral organ of botany, or plant science as it is commonly called today. I think that like in animals, many types of plant coloration can be explained by selection associated with the sensory/cognitive systems of herbivores and predators to reduce herbivory. It is intended to intrigue and stimulate students of botany/plant science and plant/animal interactions for a very long time. This book is tailored to a readership of biologists and naturalists of all kinds and levels, and more specifically for botanists, ecologists, evolutionists and to those interested in plant/animal interactions. It is written from the point of view of a naturalist, ecologist and evolutionary biologist that I hold, considering natural selection as the main although not the only drive for evolution. According to this perspective, factors such as chance, founder effects, genetic drift and various stochastic processes that may and do influence characters found in specific genotypes, are not comparable in their power and influence to the common outcomes of natural selection, especially manifested when very many species belonging to different plant families, with very different and separate evolutionary histories, arrive at the same adaptation, something that characterizes many of the visual patterns and proposed adaptations described and discussed in this book. Many of the discussed visual defensive mechanisms are aimed at operating before the plants are damaged, i.e., to be their first line of defense. In this respect, I think that the name of the book by Ruxton et al. (2004) "Avoiding Attack" is an excellent phrase for the assembly of the best types of defensive tactics. While discussing anti-herbivory, I do remember, study and teach physiological/developmental aspects of some of the discussed coloration patterns, and I am fully aware of the simultaneous and diverse functions of many plant characters in addition to defense.