Question

In an evolutionary context, successful herbivores must be able to recognize potentially lethal plants, avoid them, and pass these behaviours on to their offspring. Successful plants are those that avoid the highest level of herbivory from predators. Let us assume that a HIGH level of cyanogenic plant poison delivers a lethal dose to herbivores, while a LOW level sickens but does not kill herbivores. Which of these two strategies do you think is more evolutionarily advantageous to the plant? Explain your reasoning.

please i need a best and brief answer as this for lab report with reference

Answer 1

A plant that produces variable levels of an inducible defensive chemical is better adapted than the other (With constant defences).

1. The plant can always maintain a minimum dose level so that it can keep the predator away from the plant (the plant does not have to kill the predator for its own survival)

2. Production of high levels of defence chemicals comes at a cost to the plant.

For example, nicotine is a defence chemical produced by tobacco plants. But, plants that produce high levels of nicotine flower later than other plants.

Inducible defences are advantageous as they reduce the biosynthetic load on the plant metabolism.