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Updated: Aug 2, 2025

Herbivore-induced Blueberry Volatiles and Intra-plant Signaling
Published on: December 18, 2011
Convergent and divergent evolution of plant chemical defenses
1Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
Abstract:
The majority of the several hundred thousand specialized metabolites produced by plants function in defense against insects and other herbivores. Despite this diversity, identical metabolites or structurally distinct metabolites hitting the same targets in herbivorous animals have evolved repeatedly. This convergent evolution may reflect the constraints of plant primary metabolism in providing metabolic precursors, as well as the limited number of readily accessible targets in animals. These restrictions may make it uncommon for plants to develop completely novel toxic and deterrent metabolites, despite the ongoing evolution of resistance mechanisms in insect herbivores. Defensive compounds that are unique to individual genera or species often have long biosynthetic pathways that may complicate the repeated evolution of these metabolites in different plant species.
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