ERC Starting Grant · 2020
Evolutionary consequences of novel plant defences
Plant chemical defences play a central role in mediating interactions between plants and their enemies. Phytochemical diversity may be advantageous to reduce herbivore pressure, and plants commonly produce vast numbers of chemicals. However, the diversity of functional classes of defensive chemicals is often more limited and subject to strong phylogenetic constraints. Such functional conservatism may accelerate the evolution of tolerance in specialized herbivores, resulting in plant-herbivore systems dominated by specialists resistant to host plant defences. This presents major challenges for the study of phytochemically-mediated coevolution, as most systems lack the early stages of…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.