Insect Voicemail left on plants

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2158595/Insects-use-plants-leave-voicemail-messages-warning-bugs-eat-poisonous-leaves.html

Insects use plants to leave 'voicemail' messages warning other bugs not to eat poisonous leaves

• Herbivorous insects store their voicemails via their effects on soil fungi

By GRAHAM SMITH

PUBLISHED: 03:53 EST, 13 June 2012 | UPDATED: 03:53 EST, 13 June 2012

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Insects use plants as 'green phones' for communication with other bugs and leave 'voicemail' messages for them in the soil, according to scientists.

Herbivorous insects store their voicemails via their effects on soil fungi.

Among the messages left are warnings not to eat a poisonous plant or whether a plant has suffered from leaf-eating caterpillars.

When an insect feeds on plant leaves, the plant reacts, the soil fungi community changes, and the next generation of plants and insects picks up a message

This unique messaging service was discovered in the ragwort plant by researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO) and Wageningen University.

A few years ago, NIOO scientists discovered that soil-dwelling and above-ground insects are able to communicate with each other using the plant as a telephone.

Insects eating plant roots change the chemical composition of the leaves, causing the plant to release volatile signals into the air.

 

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This can convince above-ground insects to select another food plant in order to avoid competition and to escape from poisonous defence compounds in the plant.

The new research shows that insects leave a specific legacy that remains in the soil after they have fed on a plant.

Future plants growing on that same spot can pick up these signals from the soil and pass them on to other insects.

The messages are specific - the new plant can tell whether the former one was suffering from leaf-eating caterpillars or from root-eating insects.

Communicative device: The scientists used ragwort plants to act as phones that insects can use to store 'voicemail' messages in the soil

Lead researcher Olga Kostenko said: 'The new plants are actually decoding a "voicemail" message from the past to the next generation of plant-feeding insects, and their enemies.

'The insects are re-living the past.'

This message from the past then strongly influences the growth and possibly also the behaviour of these bugs.

So, today's insect community is influenced by the messages from past seasons.

Dr Kostenko and her colleagues grew ragwort plants in a greenhouse and exposed them to leaf-eating caterpillars or root-feeding beetle larvae. 

They then grew new plants in the same soil and exposed them to insects again.

The scientists placed plants and plant-feeding insects together to assess their ability to store 'voicemail' messages in the soil

Dr Kostenko said: 'What we discovered is that the composition of fungi in the soil changed greatly and depended on whether the insect had been feeding on roots or leaves.

'These changes in fungal community, in turn, affected the growth and chemistry of the next batch of plants and therefore the insects on those plants.'

Growth and palatability of new plants in the same soil mirrored the condition of the previous plant.

In this way, a new plant can pass down the soil legacy or message from the past to caterpillars and their enemies.

Dr Kostenko said: 'How long are these voicemail messages kept in the soil? That's what I also would like to know.

'We're working on this, and on the question of how widespread this phenomenon is in nature.'

The study will be published in the journal Ecology Letters.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2158595/Insects-use-plants-leave-voicemail-messages-warning-bugs-eat-poisonous-leaves.html#ixzz23Pox2OPw

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eco-nomics/2012/03/09/nations-largest-food-forest-to-be-built-in-middle-of-seattle/

Nation's Largest 'Food Forest' To Be Built In Middle Of Seattle

Mother Nature Network, Contributor

Written by Matt Hickman

Watch out Todmorden, you’ve got some forage-y stateside competition in the fair, plastic bag-banning city of Seattle.

Over the past few days, permaculture practitioners and urban food policy followers not just in the Emerald City but around the globe have been positively abuzz with news that a hilly and undeveloped 7-acre parcel of land owned by Seattle Public Utilities will be transformed into a lush, forager-friendly wonderland called the Beacon Food Forest.

To be clear, the future site of the food forest — thought to be the largest of its kind in the U.S. — isn’t located in some sylvan pocket on the outskirts of town, in a woodsy bedroom community, or in, gulp, neighboring Snohomish County. The Beacon Food Forest will be located less than 3 miles southeast of Seattle’s downtown core in the ethnically and economically diverse Beacon Hill neighborhood (former home of Amazon.com, by the way) adjacent to a large park. It’s very much an urban endeavor that can best be described as a P-Patch (Seattle vernacular for community plot — there are more than 75 throughout the city all overseen by a nonprofit called P-Patch Trust) on steroids.

So what exactly is a food forest, you ask? Here’s how the Beacon Food Forestdescribes the basics of this permaculture concept:

A Food Forest is a gardening technique or land management system that mimics a woodland ecosystem but substitutes in edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. Fruit and nut trees are the upper level, while below are berry shrubs, edible perennials and annuals. Companions or beneficial plants are included to attract insects for natural pest management while some plants are soil amenders providing nitrogen and mulch. Together they create relationships to form a forest garden ecosystem able to produce high yields of food with less maintenance.

Got it. According to a recent article profiling the project on NPR’s food-centric The Salt blog, the Beacon Food Forest’s design calls for nut trees and a wide array of fruit-bearing perennials such as apples, plums, grapes, pears, and berries galore. Initially, the bike parking-heavy forest will be a petite one, measuring less than 2 acres. The money — $100,000, to be exact — used to kick start the scheme comes via a grant through the 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy and the operation will be managed by the community gardening overlords at P-Patch Trust.

If all goes swimmingly with the “test zone” and more funding is secured, the entire 7-acre swath of land will be converted into an edible public landscape within a few years. Small, private plots within the forest will also be leased to individual gardeners for $10 a year and a beekeeper will eventually take residence (natch). Community education programs and workshops — pickling! preserving! plant identification! — will also be a key component of the project. No word if celebrity permaculturist Daryl Hannah plans to fly out for the ribbon-cutting.

Like in Todmorden, the small British town where a free-for-all system of community gardening is the norm, there’s the question of etiquette. “Of course, any ‘free’ food source begs the question of what to do with overzealous pickers. No definitive answer on how to handle that predicament has been established yet, though,” explains The Salt. Glenn Herlihy, a steering committee member for the Beacon Food Forest, says that two possible solutions are to simply grow so much fruit that everyone walks away happy or install ‘thieves’s gardens’ geared towards grabby and gluttonous types sporting giant reusable IKEA shopping bags and no regard for sharing the bounty with their neighbors. Or, as, Gawker points out: “Failing that, public executions send a strong message.”

Lots more over at NPR, Grist, and at Crosscut.com where the bureaucratic hoops involved with getting the project off the ground are detailed. Although a bit bare bones at the moment, the Friends of the Beacon Food Forest websitehas additional information on the project including the design master plan. And the project’s Facebook page seems to be blowing up as of late, which is fantastic.

Anyone out there have a smaller-scale community permaculture program up and running in your neck of the woods? Any Seattleites care to chime in on this potentially game-changing urban food project?

[Grist], [The Salt] via [Gawker]

Image: Seattle Parks and Recreation