Polarization of foliar reflectance: novel host plant cue for insect herbivores
Insect herbivores exploit plant cues to discern host and non-host plants. Studies of visual plant cues have focused on colour despite the inherent polarization sensitivity of insect photoreceptors and the information carried by polarization of foliar reflectance, most notably the degree of linear po...
Saved in:
Published in | Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Vol. 286; no. 1915; p. 20192198 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
The Royal Society
20.11.2019
|
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Insect herbivores exploit plant cues to discern host and non-host plants. Studies of visual plant cues have focused on colour despite the inherent polarization sensitivity of insect photoreceptors and the information carried by polarization of foliar reflectance, most notably the degree of linear polarization (
; 0-100%). The
of foliar reflection was hypothesized to be a host plant cue for insects but was never experimentally tested. Here, we show that cabbage white butterflies,
(Pieridae), exploit the
of foliar reflections to discriminate among plants. In experiments with paired digital plant images,
females preferred images of the host plant cabbage with a low
(31%) characteristic of cabbage foliage over images of a non-host potato plant with a higher
(50%). By reversing the
of these images, we were able to shift the butterflies' preference for the cabbage host plant image to the potato non-host plant image, indicating that the
had a greater effect on foraging decisions than the differential colour, intensity, or shape of the two plant images. Although previously not recognized, the
of foliar reflection is an essential plant cue that may commonly be exploited by foraging insect herbivores. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4721504. |
ISSN: | 0962-8452 1471-2954 |
DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2019.2198 |