This review is a comprehensive study of recent advances related to cytological, biochemical and physiological changes induced in plants in response to eriophyoid mite attack. It has been shown that responses of host plants to eriophyoids are variable. Most of the variability is due to individual eriophyoid mite-plant interactions. Usually, the direction and intensity of changes in eriophyoid-infested plant organs depend on mite genotype, density, or the feeding period, and are strongly differentiated relative to host plant species, cultivar, age and location. Although the mechanisms of changes elicited by eriophyoid mites within plants are not fully understood, in many cases the qualitative and quantitative biochemical status of mite-infested plants are known to affect the performance of consecutive herbivorous arthropods. In future, elucidation of the pathways from eriophyoid mite damage to plant gene activation will be necessary to clarify plant responses and to explain variation in plant tissue damage at the feeding and adjacent sites.

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Little is known about how plants deal with arthropod herbivores under the fluctuating light intensity and spectra which occur in natural environments. Moreover, the role of simultaneous stress such as excess light (EL) in the regulation of plant responses to herbivores is poorly characterized. In the current study, we focused on a mite-herbivore, specifically, the two-spotted spider mite (TSSM), which is one of the major agricultural pests worldwide. Our results showed that TSSM-induced leaf damage (visualized by trypan blue staining) and oviposition rate (measured as daily female fecundity) decreased after EL pre-treatment in wild-type Arabidopsis plants, but the observed responses were not wavelength specific. Thus, we established that EL pre-treatment reduced Arabidopsis susceptibility to TSSM infestation. Due to the fact that a portion of EL energy is dissipated by plants as heat in the mechanism known as non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) of chlorophyll fluorescence, we tested an Arabidopsis npq4-1 mutant impaired in NPQ. We showed that npq4-1 plants are significantly less susceptible to TSSM feeding activity, and this result was not dependent on light pre-treatment. Therefore, our findings strongly support the role of light in plant defence against TSSM, pointing to a key role for a photoprotective mechanism such as NPQ in this regulation. We hypothesize that plants impaired in NPQ are constantly primed to mite attack, as this seems to be a universal evolutionarily conserved mechanism for herbivores.

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Main conclusionIn maize, leaf proteome responses evoked by soil drought applied separately differ from those evoked by mite feeding or both types of stresses occurring simultaneously.This study focuses on the involvement of proteomic changes in defence responses of a conventional maize cultivar (Bosman) to the two-spotted spider mite infestation, soil drought and both stresses coexisting for 6 days. Under watering cessation or mite feeding applied separately, the protein carbonylation was not directly linked to the antioxidant enzymes’ activities. Protein carbonylation increased at higher and lower SOD, APX, GR, POX, PPO activities following soil drought and mite feeding, respectively. Combination of these stresses resulted in protein carbonylation decrease despite the increased activity of all antioxidant enzymes (except the CAT). However, maize protein network modification remains unknown upon biotic/abiotic stresses overlapping. Here, using multivariate chemometric methods, 94 leaf protein spots (out of 358 considered; 2-DE) were identified (LC–MS/MS) as differentiating the studied treatments. Only 43 of them had individual discrimination power. The soil drought increased abundance of leaf proteins related mainly to photosynthesis, carbohydrate metabolism, defence (molecular chaperons) and protection. On the contrary, mite feeding decreased the abundance of photosynthesis related proteins and enhanced the abundance of proteins protecting the mite-infested leaf against photoinhibition. The drought and mites occurring simultaneously increased abundance of proteins that may improve the efficiency of carbon fixation, as well as carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism. Furthermore, increased abundance of the Rubisco large subunit-binding protein (subunit β), fructose-bisphosphate aldolase and mitochondrial precursor of Mn-SOD and decreased abundance of the glycolysis-related enzymes in the mite-free leaf (in the vicinity of mite-infested leaf) illustrate the involvement of these proteins in systemic maize response to mite feeding.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00425-016-2559-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The paper presents recent advances related to both specific and unspecific morphological alterations of plant organs caused by eriophyoid mites. Based on old and new case studies, the diversity of plant malformations, such as galls, non-distortive feeding effects and complex symptoms induced by eriophyoids and/or pathogens vectored by them, is analysed and summarised.

Plants growing in constantly changeable environmental conditions are compelled to evolve regulatory mechanisms to cope with biotic and abiotic stresses. Effective defence to invaders is largely connected with phytohormone regulation, resulting in the production of numerous defensive proteins and specialized metabolites. In our work, we elucidated the role of the Abscisic Acid Insensitive 4 (ABI4) transcription factor in the plant response to the two-spotted spider mite (TSSM). This polyphagous mite is one of the most destructive herbivores, which sucks mesophyll cells of numerous crop and wild plants. Compared to the wild-type (Col-0) Arabidopsis thaliana plants, the abi4 mutant demonstrated increased susceptibility to TSSM, reflected as enhanced female fecundity and greater frequency of mite leaf damage after trypan blue staining. Because ABI4 is regarded as an important player in the plastid-to-nucleus retrograde signalling process, we investigated the plastid envelope membrane dynamics using stroma-associated fluorescent marker. Our results indicated a clear increase in the number of stroma-filled tubular structures deriving from the plastid membrane (stromules) in the close proximity of the site of mite leaf damage, highlighting the importance of chloroplast-derived signals in the response to TSSM feeding activity.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10493-017-0203-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.