Resistance management in a native plant: nicotine prevents herbivores from compensating for plant protease inhibitors

Abstract

Plants deploy chemical defenses in complex mixtures, which are thought to be adaptive, but experimental tests have used artificial diets rather than plants. Herbivore attack on Nicotiana attenuata rapidly increases the production and accumulation of trypsin proteinase inhibitors (TPI) and the toxic alkaloid nicotine. By transgenically silencing their respective biosynthetic genes, we were able to abolish TPI activity and reduce inducible nicotine by 85%. Nicotine production was not affected by silencing pi or vice versa, and transformation did not alter levels of other metabolites examined. Spodoptera exigua, a native generalist herbivore that can compensate for heterologous TPI expression, performed better on TPI‐ or nicotine‐deficient plants compared with the wild‐type. Because of a compensatory feeding response to TPI when nicotine is absent, larvae performed better on nicotine‐deficient plants than they did on plants silenced in both defenses. The antifeedant toxin, nicotine, prevents this compensatory response. We conclude that N. attenuata counters an insect adaptation with a defensive synergism.