Tag: Biotic Interactions

Rice is an important food crop in China, but the damage of rice blast fungus is an important factor affecting the high and stable yield of rice. Liu Jun's research group of the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences found in the previous study that when rice blast fungus infects rice,…

When plants are under attack by herbivores and microbes, running away is not an option. As a defence, plants produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that repel herbivores, attract enemies of the herbivores, or alarm surrounding plants; VOCs have mostly been viewed as positive regulators in the plant…

Plants are not able to move out of their neighborhood if they are unhappy, but they are capable of recruiting and assembling a community in which they are able to thrive. Plants are also able to initiate defense when they sense that threats are near. To keep tabs on their neighbors, plants utilize both…

The term “phyllosphere” refers to the world of microbes that interact among themselves and with their plant hosts above ground. In this review, the authors explore what is known about this interesting habitat and how abiotic factors, especially light, influences the interactions and survival of its…

Hemipterans, a group of phloem-feeding insects that includes aphids, planthoppers, and whiteflies, are responsible for the spread of most plant viruses from plant to plant. Stylet positioning and feeding activities have important consequences for the acquisition and transmission of viruses by insect…

We often think about how the soil environment influences plants, but two new papers focus on how plants influence the soil environment (through abiotic and biotic effects), in turn affecting other plants. These plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) can be negative (resource depletion, natural enemy accumulation)…

Plants encounter myriad invaders, including bacteria, fungi, insects, and other parasites. These pathogens generally deliver effector proteins into plants, increasing their virulence and targeting various host processes (Toruño et al., 2016). Although advances in the past two decades have led to significant…

The soil-borne pathogen Plasmodiophora brassicae can infect most members of the Brassicaceae family. The infections, which can lead to extensive crop losses, typically involve development of galls in the underground tissues of the plant, giving the pathogen its common name, ‘clubroot’. Although…