My research evolves around the role which the sense of taste and smell might play in the coevolution of insects and plants. These interests developed during my studies at the Technical University of Munich and Wageningen University before conduction my PhD research at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology on the sensory ecology of the hawkmoths Manduca sexta. I am now Assistant Professor for insect physiology at WUR where I focus on the coevolution between Pieris butterflies and their Brassica host-plants.
Abstract
Insect and plants are intertwined in a coevolutionary arms-race of chemical plant defences and insect countermeasures. Plants might evolve new secondary metabolites, which frees them from their original herbivore community and allows them to diversify. However, certain insects might overcome these defences allowing them in terms to radiate on an exclusive food source. This reciprocal interaction has led to a large share of the biodiversity we find today in terrestrial ecosystems. A crucial aspect in this interaction is the ability of an insect to discriminate those plants to which it has adapted, and which are free of its natural enemies from those which are toxic, or which have just recruited deadly predators. Insects have evolved a large array of chemoreceptors to navigate their environment and in this seminar, we will try to explore the role these sensory genes might play in the coevolution of insects and plants. We will see how the loss and gain of novel receptors might have driven host-plant adaptions in insects and enable them to avoid their natural enemies. Finally, we discuss how these info-chemical networks between insect herbivores, their host-plants and natural enemies can be leveraged for a more sustainable management of agroecosystems.