| do induced responses mediate the ecological interactions between the specialist herbivores and phytopathogens of an alpine plant? | plants are not passive victims of the myriad attackers that rely on them for nutrition. they have a suite of physical and chemical defences, and are even able to take advantage of the enemies of their enemies. these strategies are often only deployed upon attack, so may lead to indirect interactions between herbivores and phytopathogens. in this study we test for induced responses in wild populations of an alpine plant (adenostyles alliariae) that possesses constitutive chemical defence (pyrroli ... | 2011 | 21573247 |
| counter-intuitive developmental plasticity induced by host quality. | adaptation to different hosts plays a central role in the evolution of specialization and speciation in phytophagous insects and parasites, and our ability to experimentally rank hosts by their quality is critical to research to understand these processes. here we provide a counter-intuitive example in which growth is faster on poor quality hosts. the leaf beetles oreina elongata and oreina cacaliae share their host plant with the rust uromyces cacaliae. larvae reared on infected adenostyles all ... | 2008 | 18198142 |
| the phylogeography of an alpine leaf beetle: divergence within oreina elongata spans several ice ages. | the genetic landscape of the european flora and fauna was shaped by the ebb and flow of populations with the shifting ice during quaternary climate cycles. while this has been well demonstrated for lowland species, less is known about high altitude taxa. here we analyze the phylogeography of the leaf beetle oreina elongata from 20 populations across the alps and apennines. three mitochondrial and one nuclear region were sequenced in 64 individuals. within an mtdna phylogeny, three of seven subsp ... | 2010 | 20807580 |
| glacial survival and local adaptation in an alpine leaf beetle. | the challenge in defining conservation units so that they represent evolutionary entities has been to combine both genetic properties and ecological significance. here we make use of the complexity of the european alps, with their genetic landscape shaped by geographical barriers and postglacial colonization, to examine the correlation between ecological and genetic divergence. montane species, because of the fragmentation of their present habitat, constitute extreme cases in which to test if ge ... | 2007 | 17561894 |
| response of a leaf beetle to two food plants, only one of which provides a sequestrable defensive chemical. | oreina elongata is a chemically defended leaf beetle. if its food plant contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, all life stages of the beetle sequester them. however, one of the two known host-plant genera does not contain these alkaloids. in this paper we compare the adult feeding preference and larval performance of two populations, one feeding on adenostyles alliariae (which contains alkaloids) and one on cirsium spinosissimum (devoid of alkaloids). adults of the population living on c. spinosissim ... | 1994 | 28313939 |