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Induced Plant Defense: Evolution of Induction and Adaptive Phenotypic Plasticity

Induced defenses may evolve in natural plant populations where heritable variation in inducibility affects plant fitness. Although this has not been documented for any plant – parasite system, genetic variation in induction has been recently reported for several plant-parasite systems. Correlations between induction and fitness in variable parasite environments suggest that inducibility may indeed be subject to selection, however, these studies focussed on phenotypic (not genetic) correlations. Our current state of knowledge suggests that induced defenses may be an example of adaptive plasticity, where defenses enhance plant fitness when parasites are present, and reduce fitness when parasites are absent. Future work that focuses on consequences of genetic variation in induction and macro-evolutionary trends in inducible versus constitutive defense will help advance our understanding of the evolutionary biology of induced plant defense.