A Trip Back Home: Resistance to Herbivores of Native and Non-Native Plant Populations of Datura stramonium

• Published in: Plants (Basel) 2024-01, Vol.13 (1), p.131
• Main Authors: Núñez-Farfán, Juan, Velázquez-Márquez, Sabina, Torres-García, Jesús R, De-la-Cruz, Ivan M, Arroyo, Juan, Valverde, Pedro L, Flores-Ortiz, César M, Hernández-Portilla, Luis B, López-Cobos, Diana E, Matías, Javier D
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abundance; Alkaloids; Datura stramonium; datura striped beetle; Flowers & plants; Fruits; Genetic diversity; Herbivores; Hypotheses; Indigenous plants; Infestation; Insects; invasive species; Metabolites; native and non-native populations; Native species; Natural enemies; Nonnative species; Pest resistance; Plant populations; Plant resistance; Populations; Resource availability; Scopolamine; Tobacco; tobacco flea beetle; tobacco weevil
• ISSN: 2223-7747; 2223-7747
• DOI: 10.3390/plants13010131

When colonizing new ranges, plant populations may benefit from the absence of the checks imposed by the enemies, herbivores, and pathogens that regulated their numbers in their original range. Therefore, rates of plant damage or infestation by natural enemies are expected to be lower in the new range. Exposing both non-native and native plant populations in the native range, where native herbivores are present, can be used to test whether resistance mechanisms have diverged between populations. is native to the Americas but widely distributed in Spain, where populations show lower herbivore damage than populations in the native range. We established experiments in two localities in the native range (Mexico), exposing two native and two non-native populations to natural herbivores. Plant performance differed between the localities, as did the abundance of the main specialist herbivore, . In Teotihuacán, where is common, native plants had significantly more adult beetles and herbivore damage than non-native plants. The degree of infestation by the specialist seed predator differed among populations and between sites, but the native Ticumán population always had the lowest level of infestation. The Ticumán population also had the highest concentration of the alkaloid scopolamine. Scopolamine was negatively related to the number of eggs deposited by in Teotihuacán. There was among-family variation in herbivore damage (resistance), alkaloid content (scopolamine), and infestation by and , indicating genetic variation and potential for further evolution. Although native and non-native populations have not yet diverged in plant resistance/constitutive defense, the differences between ranges (and the two experimental sites) in the type and abundance of herbivores suggest that further research is needed on the role of resource availability and adaptive plasticity, specialized metabolites (induced, constitutive), and the relationship between genealogical origin and plant defense in both ranges.