Host plants, defense mechanisms against

Plants are continually exposed to a vast array of potential phytopathogenic fungi nevertheless, plants resist to most of them by blocking fungal development soon after penetration. Resistance against pathogens can be distinguished in resistance at the species level (non-host resistance) and resistance at the cultivar level (race-cultivar resistance). Plants lack a circulatory system and antibodies and have evolved a defense mechanism that is distinct from the vertebrate immune... 

Nonapparent plants were fast growing, short-lived, and occurred unpredictably in space and/or time. Thus, many of these plants would escape detection by the majority of herbivores. Because these plants allocated most of their resources to rapid growth and reproduction, they were believed to be defended by relatively low concentrations of toxic compounds that were generally effective against many herbivores but that some specialist herbivores would be able to evolve detoxification mechanisms against (and may even use the qualitative defenses as cues to locate their host). These toxic compounds such as alkaloids and terpenes were termed qualitative defenses because their potency made them effective at low concentrations qualitative defenses of the PAM are analogous to mobile defenses of the RAM. 

On the other hand, microorganisms and herbivores rely on plants as a food source. Since both have survived, there must be mechanisms of adaptations toward the defensive chemistry of plants. Many herbivores have evolved strategies to avoid the extremely toxic plants and prefer the less toxic ones. In addition, many herbivores have potent mechanisms to detoxify xenobiotics, which allows the exploitation of at least the less toxic plants. In insects, many specialists evolved that are adapted to the defense chemicals of their host plant, in that they accumulate these compounds and exploit them for their own defense. Alkaloids obviously function as defense molecules against insect predators in the examples studied, and this is further support for the hypothesis that the same compound also serves for chemical defense in the host plant. 

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