PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 39: Late Breaking and Newsworthy Posters
Friday, August 12, 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Toxic fruit, secondary metabolites and the phenylpropanoid pathway.
Haak, David1, Tewksbury, Joshua1, 1 University of Washington-Seattle, Seattle, WA, USA
ABSTRACT- Early studies of plant biochemistry identified a wide array of chemicals produced by plants which had no obvious role in primary physiological processes, such as growth and reproduction. These secondary metabolites were at first thought to be waste products generated through metabolic processes, but a series of studies overturned this view, highlighting the importance of secondary metabolites in mediating interactions between plants and herbivores, pollinators, and pathogens. Today, it is recognized that many of the most intricate and fundamental plant-animal interactions are mediated by plant secondary metabolites. Much of this work has focused on the costs and benefits of secondary metabolite production in vegetative tissues and unripe fruit, where the evolutionary function of such compounds is typically defense. Many plants, however, also produce secondary metabolites in ripe fruit. Here, adaptive explanations for the presence of secondary metabolites are more complex, as the entire fruit-phenotype must balance the effective protection of the fruit from unwanted consumers (microbial fruit and seed consumers and invertebrate and vertebrate seed predators) with the protection and advertisement of fruit and seeds for beneficial consumption by seed dispersers. Given the tremendous influence of secondary metabolites on plant-herbivore interactions, consideration of their role in seed dispersal will be critical for developing general theories of dispersal ecology and plant-animal interactions.
Key words: secondary metabolites, ripe fruit, chemical defense, tradeoff