A University of Michigan study finds that plants growing in nutrient-rich soil may be more likely to defend themselves against insects.
The study, led by U-M scientist Mia Howard and published in the journal Oikos, showed that goldenrod that grew in fields fed annually with agricultural levels of nitrogen were more likely to “nod” as a defense mechanism against insects that lay eggs in the tip of their stem.
“One of the exciting things about this finding is that there are so many hypotheses and theories predicting that resources would affect the evolution of plant defenses, and here we have the first experimental evidence to show that it does,” said Howard, an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Source : umich.edu