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 7 attack DHJanzen100246.jpg high resolution
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| The nature of the attack by herbivores (sensu latu) on a plant is well represented by this cartoon of the attack on a French medieval castle by an artist called Gargantua (which tells you the origin of the word gargantuan). Green nature looks so serene, but every plant is under constant assault by an enormous array of many species of herbivores - fungi, viruses, bacteria, archaea, insects, mites, vertebrates - and like a castle, it cannot run or hide. At best, it can participate in a single dispersal event when hardly a newborn child (a.k.a. a seed), and in this it has to achieve much more than escape from its enemies. The pragmatic consquence is that one does not speak of THE defense of a plant (though one might speak of THE defense of a plant against some particular species of herbivore), but rather one speaks and thinks of the defensES of a plant. The simple rind of an orange contains over 450 secondary compounds, and nearly all have been selected for through the actions of attackers (though a very few may be part of the attractant for some long-gone orange seed dispersal agent). | ||
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