A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, studied the ecological function of linalool, a naturally abundant volatile organic compound, in wild Nicotiana attenuata tobacco plants. They found the gene responsible for linalool synthesis and release which vary considerably in plants of the same species. Females of the tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta) prefer to lay eggs on plants with a higher naturally occurring linalool. At the same time, the more linalool a plant released, the more eggs and freshly hatched larvae were predated on by bugs. Behavioral assays in increasingly complex environments showed that the effects of linalool are quite variable, depending on the natural environment and the genetic makeup of the plant. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Click here for original story, The chemical language of plants depends on context
Source: Phys.org