The digestive waste product of sucking herbivores, known as honeydew, betrays the presence of brown planthopper to rice plants, due to the bacteria contained in the honeydew secretions.
A population survey of phytoseiid mites and spider mites was conducted on peach leaves and wild plants in Japanese peach orchards having different pesticide practices. The phytoseiid mite species composition on peach leaves and wild plants, as estimated using quantitative sequencing, changed during the survey period. Moreover, it varied among study sites. The phytoseiid mite species compositions were similar between peach leaves and some wild plants, such as Veronica persica, Paederia foetida, Persicaria longiseta, and Oxalis corniculata with larger quantities of phytoseiid mites, especially after mid-summer. A PCR-based method to detect the ribosomal ITS sequences of Tetranychus kanzawai and Panonychus mori from phytoseiid mites was developed. Results showed that Euseius sojaensis (specialized pollen feeder/generalist predator) uses both spider mites as prey in the field.
Success of plants largely depends on their ability to defend against herbivores. Since emergence of the first voracious consumers, plants maintained adapting their structures and chemistry to escape from extinction. The constant pressure was further accelerated by adaptation of herbivores to plant defenses, which all together sparked the rise of a chemical empire comprised of thousands of specialized metabolites currently found in plants.
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