Growth and chemical defense in relation to resource availability: tradeoffs or common responses to environmental stress?

Abstract

One aspect of plant defense is the production of constitutive secondary compounds that confer toxicity on herbivores and pathogens. The purpose of this study was to compare patterns of plant tissue toxicity across gradients of irradiance and nutrient content. We measured the potential toxicity (1/LC50) of extracts of six species of herbaceous Asteraceae grown under controlled conditions of temperature (25ºC), humidity (80%), photoperiod (16 h/day), in a range of concentrations of a modified Hoagland hydroponic solution (full-strength, 1/5 dilute, 1/10 dilute, and 1/50 dilute) and under two different light intensities (250 and 125 mumol/m²/s). The plants grew from seed for 42 days post-germination, and randomly chosen plants were harvested each 7 days. We did a general measure of potential phytochemical toxicity using an alcohol extraction of secondary compounds followed by brine shrimp (Artemia sp.) bioassay. Contrary to the carbon/nutrient balance hypothesis, tissue toxicity generally increased with decreasing irradiance and nutrient levels, so that plants whose growth was most restricted had tissues that were most toxic, although there were species-specific differences in this trend.