Plasticity in plant mating systems.

Many plants are extremely plastic in their vegetative and life-history traits, allowing them to deal with a variety of environmental conditions during their lifetime. However, in our understanding of plant reproduction, plasticity in mating system is not broadly considered. Even though mating system shifts are well studied on an evolutionary timescale, we show that many traits affecting plant mating system also show plasticity within an ecological timeframe.

Bringing Fundamental Insights of Induced Resistance to Agricultural Management of Herbivore Pests.

In response to herbivory, most plant species adjust their chemical and morphological phenotype to acquire induced resistance to the attacking herbivore. Induced resistance may be an optimal defence strategy that allows plants to reduce metabolic costs of resistance in the absence of herbivores, allocate resistance to the most valuable plant tissues and tailor its response to the pattern of attack by multiple herbivore species. Moreover, plasticity in resistance decreases the potential that herbivores adapt to specific plant resistance traits and need to deal with a moving target of variable plant quality.