When plants cry for help, predator bugs answer
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Aug.26th.2010
http://www.eurekalert.org/features/kids/2010-08/aaft-wpc082010.php
This article describes amazing relations between the plants, pests and predators. It describes how the plants (In this case a tobacco plant) can save themselves by making changes in the smell of their compounds. These plant smell changes (caterpillar) are caused by the pest's saliva. The grassy smell then attracts the bugs (Predators) which eat the pests (In this case hornwarm).
This is very interesting to me because who would say that the plant can fight with something- its a living thing, and I thought it was powerless! This article has shown the opposite, from what I read. I can see how the interesting relations between biotic factors in some ecosystems can be.
I Like how you explained mostly everything in just 2 short paragraphs. Nice work.
ReplyDelete-Doroteja
I liked how you gave us a substantial amount of information of the article, so that we could fully understand the concept, but you also added a lot on how this interested you and it helped you understand further in the unit we are currently studying.
ReplyDeleteJust one thing that I would add would be to say who discovered this in this case in the article it says that, Silke Allmann of the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences in Amsterdam, Netherlands and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany and Ian Baldwin of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology made this discovery. But all in all it was great.
hey
ReplyDeleteI like how you summarized this article to give us some information in the way that we want to read more, and I also think it was a really interesting topic. I like how you were honest and said that you thought that plants were defenseless and that it amazed you that they actually could fight against other creatures.