Translating bumblebee dialect…
Plants interact with both harmful insects that eat them and helpful insects that protect them. Ants often defend plants from herbivores, but they do so while farming sap-feeding aphids that produce honeydew. This means plants, aphids, and ants form a three-way relationship–one that plants may be able to influence through their own defensive chemistry. This project investigates how activating plant defense hormones affects aphid growth, which ant species arrive, and how much protection those ants ultimately provide. Because ant species differ greatly in how aggressively they defend plants, even small changes in which ants show up can alter plant outcomes. This project tests these ideas in the well-studied aspen–aphid–ant system. This project also asks whether plants can ?anticipate help? from ants. Using young aspen sunflower, the project will examine whether simple exposure to ants–before plants offer rewards–leads them to invest less in costly chemical defenses because they expect protection. Together, these studies will reveal how plants shape ant behavior and how indirect defense fits into broader plant strategies in natural communities.