Affiliation:
1. Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
2. Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA
Abstract
Insect herbivores exploit plant cues to discern host and non-host plants. Studies of visual plant cues have focused on colour despite the inherent polarization sensitivity of insect photoreceptors and the information carried by polarization of foliar reflectance, most notably the degree of linear polarization (
DoLP
; 0–100%). The
DoLP
of foliar reflection was hypothesized to be a host plant cue for insects but was never experimentally tested. Here, we show that cabbage white butterflies,
Pieris rapae
(Pieridae), exploit the
DoLP
of foliar reflections to discriminate among plants. In experiments with paired digital plant images,
P. rapae
females preferred images of the host plant cabbage with a low
DoLP
(31%) characteristic of cabbage foliage over images of a non-host potato plant with a higher
DoLP
(50%). By reversing the
DoLP
of these images, we were able to shift the butterflies' preference for the cabbage host plant image to the potato non-host plant image, indicating that the
DoLP
had a greater effect on foraging decisions than the differential colour, intensity, or shape of the two plant images. Although previously not recognized, the
DoLP
of foliar reflection is an essential plant cue that may commonly be exploited by foraging insect herbivores.
Funder
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Cited by
16 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献