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Functional Ecology 2011, 25, 339–347 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2435.2010.01789.x

EVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGY OF PLANT DEFENCES

The ecology and evolution of induced resistance against
herbivores
Richard Karban*
Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA

Summary
1. Induced resistance is now widely accepted as a potent and widespread ecological force
although several pieces of the story remain very poorly known. Theory predicts that induced
defences should be favoured in variable environments especially when plants can use cues to reli-
ably predict future conditions; however, this idea has not been seriously evaluated for plants.
2. Theory also predicts that plastic, induced defences should be favoured over permanent, con-
stitutive defences if defences are costly and not always needed. This hypothesis has received con-
siderable attention and limited support; resource allocation costs have been difficult to detect
although ecological costs of defence may be more common. Recently, priming has emerged as a
mechanism that may further reduce costs. Primed plants do not immediately produce the gene
products associated with induced resistance but later respond more rapidly and strongly to
severe or repeated attacks. It remains to be determined how common priming is.
3. Much of what we know about induced resistance is from the herbivore’s point of view.
Induced resistance will be beneficial from the plant’s point of view if herbivores avoid induced
plants, but the behavioural responses of herbivores to induced plant variation are still poorly
studied.
4. Recent progress in understanding the detailed spatial and temporal extent of induced resis-
tance has improved our appreciation of the phenomenon. Although some induced responses are
systemic throughout entire plant individuals, many others have been found to be localized to
damaged tissues. Plant vascular architecture and transpiration rates greatly constrain the distri-
bution of vascular cues. Some plants rely on volatile cues that are active over relatively short dis-
tances and may be subject to eavesdropping by other plants, herbivores, and carnivores.
Similarly, the temporal duration of induced responses may have important consequences on
effectiveness although limited information is available concerning lag times before induction and
relaxation times following induction.
5. Limited spatial and temporal scales of induced responses make plants more variable from the
herbivore’s point of view. Recent work suggests that plant heterogeneity may be difficult for her-
bivores to cope with although this hypothesis awaits further empirical testing.
Key-words: communication, costs, defence, heterogeneity, priming, volatiles

Now, 40 years after the early descriptions of induced
resistance in plants to insects (Green & Ryan 1972; Benz
1974; Haukioja & Hakala 1975), the importance of this
interaction as an ecological force is no longer controver-
sial. For example, induced resistance is included in most
ecology textbooks that discuss plant defences or plant–
herbivore interactions. Induced resistance has been found
to be widespread in plants (Karban & Baldwin 1997)
*Correspondence author. E-mail: rkarban@ucdavis.edu
and can produce large effects on herbivore populations
(Karban & Carey 1984; Underwood & Rausher 2002)
and herbivore communities (Thaler et al. 2001; Ohgushi
2008). Furthermore, recent progress using genetic manip-
ulations has provided more definitive evidence of signifi-
cant roles for several biochemical mechanisms and
signalling pathways in the induction process. For exam-
ple, tobacco genotypes engineered for high and low levels
of induced proteinase inhibitors were respectively more
and less resistant to caterpillars (Zavala et al. 2004), and

Ó 2010 The Author. Functional Ecology Ó 2010 British Ecological Society


340 R. Karban
tobacco plants with genetically impaired inducible jasmo-
nate signalling pathways were more susceptible even to
herbivores that normally ignore wild type tobacco plants
(Paschold, Halitschke & Baldwin 2007).
However, induced plant resistance is not the necessary or
ubiquitous outcome of attacks by herbivores. Many plants
are damaged by herbivores without becoming measurably
more resistant, and some plants become more susceptible
to additional attacks by herbivores (Karban & Baldwin
1997:116–119; Nykanen & Koricheva 2004). Plants may also
express tolerance to herbivory although we know less about
whether tolerance can be induced (Nunez-Farfan, Fornoni &
Valverde 2007). This variation in plant responses to damage
begs the question: can we predict the outcome of the plant–
herbivore interaction? Under what circumstances do we
observe plants inducing resistance to herbivores rather than
becoming more susceptible?
The distribution of induced resistance
In general, phenotypes should be more plastic in environ-
ments that are more variable (Darwin 1881; Bradshaw
1965), and this prediction has been supported by compara-
tive studies of a variety of organisms (e.g. frogs, Van Bus-
kirk 2002). Similar theory has been applied to plasticity of
plant defences (Adler & Karban 1994; Karban & Nagasaka
2004; Ito & Sakai 2009). When the identity or severity of
damage caused by herbivory varies for a plant either across
space or time, a plastic strategy (induced resistance) may be
better than one that is fixed (constitutive resistance). In
addition, a plastic strategy should be favoured if a plant
can adjust its defences appropriately to match its current
environment. An appropriate match to current risks will be
facilitated when cues about the past environment are reli-
able predictors of future environments (Karban et al. 1999).
Surprisingly, despite hundreds of catalogued examples of
induced responses in plants, these long-standing predictions
have not been seriously examined for plant and herbivore
systems although testing this theory would significantly
advance our understanding of the conditions that favour
induced defences.
Several authors have argued that environmental conditions
may drive or constrain the evolution of various modes of
plant defence (Coley, Bryant & Chapin 1985; Grime 2001).
Plants that are well defended will have to replace less tissue
lost to herbivory. Plants that are adapted to stressful or
resource-poor environments generally grow more slowly than
those adapted to resource-rich environments. Slower growing
plants are predicted to invest more heavily in constitutive
defences than rapidly growing plants. Mechanisms responsi-
ble for this association include an inability to replace tissues
that are consumed by herbivores, and a lack of the machinery
or resources needed to mount effective induced defences
(Karban & Baldwin 1997). This theory makes intuitive sense
and has been supported by some of the studies that have
attempted to test it (e.g. Fine et al. 2006), although most of
these have not explicitly considered induced vs. constitutive
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defences. One interesting study compared pairs of congeners
in resource-poor glades vs. richer non-glade habitats (Van
Zandt 2007). In general, congeners from resource-poor sites
grew more slowly and relied more on constitutive rather than
induced defences. The generality of these results remains
unclear.
These important predictions relating variable and produc-
tive environments to induced plant defences are still in need
of testing. Other hypotheses involving costs of defences have
been proposed to explain induced resistance and these have
received more attention.
Induced resistance as a means of reducing
costs
Induced resistance has also been theorized to be favoured
as a means of saving costs (Rhoades 1979; Karban &
Baldwin 1997; Stamp 2003). When herbivores are not pres-
ent, a plant can allocate resources to growth or reproduc-
tion rather than to defence. When herbivores are present, a
plant can increase its allocation to defence in a manner
that will protect it from the particular herbivores at hand.
Allocation costs of plant defences have proven exceedingly
difficult to detect under natural field conditions (Koricheva
2002; Agrawal 2005). One reason for this difficulty is that
allocation costs are often considered in terms of carbon
(C) or nitrogen (N). If plant fitness is not limited by these
particular currencies that happen to be easy to measure,
then there is no reason to expect that allocation costs mea-
sured in C or N will be detectable. Focusing on C or N
may reduce our ability to understand the relationship of
induced defences to plant fitness and more direct measures
of plant fitness are preferred. Plants can invest in many
different processes and tissues that ultimately increase life-
time fitness; as a result, there is no necessary correlation
between resources spent on defence and those available for
the particular fitness correlates that any one study mea-
sures (Karban & Baldwin 1997:196–207). For example,
tradeoffs were undetectable between induction of defences
and female reproduction (a common measure of plant
fitness) but were seen when male reproduction was also
considered (Agrawal, Strauss & Stout 1999).
In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that ecological
costs of defence may exceed costs measured in terms of
resources (Simms 1992; Karban & Baldwin 1997; Strauss
et al. 2002). Defending against one herbivore often makes the
plant more susceptible to other attackers or ecological
threats. For example, induction caused by some pathogens
made tomato plants better defended against these pathogens
but more vulnerable to caterpillars (Thaler et al. 2002). How-
ever, defences can have complicated consequences that affect
the interactions of the focal plant with other species and abi-
otic challenges and the net effects can be difficult to predict
(Stout, Thaler & Thomma 2006). For example, defending
against herbivores may affect a plant’s attractiveness to poll-
inators or other mutualists (Adler & Bronstein 2004; Kessler,
Diezel & Baldwin 2009).

Priming and costs
Plants that are exposed to damage by herbivores may be
‘primed’ to respond rather than mounting a full induced
response (Conrath et al. 2006; Frost et al. 2008). Plants that
are primed by previous cues do not express measurable
changes in their phenotypes unless they are attacked subse-
quently by herbivores. If plants that have been primed are
subsequently attacked, they respond more rapidly and more
strongly than plants that have not been primed. Priming has
been known to occur in response to pathogen infection for
several decades and has been considered an important part of
vertebrate immunity for much longer. However, only in the
past few years we have become aware of a similar phenome-
non involving plant responses to herbivores (Engelberth et al.
2004). These workers found that maize plants that were not
damaged but had been primed by herbivore-induced volatiles
responded more quickly and more strongly to caterpillar
attack. Priming is relevant to this discussion because this
mechanism may allow plants to further reduce costs and to
adjust defences to current risks.
Plants become primed in response to cues indicative of
herbivores or to low levels of attack. In the event of higher
levels of herbivore attack or repeated exposure to cues asso-
ciated with herbivory, they respond by producing the more
costly metabolites required to induce resistance. Priming is
assumed to accrue some small costs or else all plants would
remain constantly in the primed state. This difference in the
benefits and costs caused by priming vs. induced resistance
has been best characterized for Arabidopsis infected with
pathogens (Van Hulten et al. 2006). Priming caused no
measurable costs in terms of growth or seed production for
Arabidopsis relative to unprimed controls. By contrast,
induction of resistance reduced growth by as much as 71%
and reduced seed production by more than 30% relative to
controls. This is a convincing example of minimal costs of
priming but it involves only one plant species, Arabidopsis
attacked by pathogens in the lab, and it would be informa-
tive to repeat with other species attacked by herbivores under
natural conditions.
There are many potential costs of producing, storing and
metabolizing the morphological structures and chemicals
used to provide resistance to herbivores (Karban & Baldwin
1997). These processes or their end products may be damag-
ing to the plant as well as its herbivores. Another potential
‘cost’ of induced defences is that the plant is vulnerable to
herbivores during the time between initial attack and expres-
sion of the induced defence. A constitutively defended plant
does not experience this period of vulnerability. Priming can
also help to reduce this ‘cost’ since plants may become
primed prior to actual herbivore attack in response to cues
that predict a high risk of herbivory. Priming allows plants
to produce the induced response more rapidly, perhaps
because the genes involved in signalling are already up-regu-
lated although the defensive metabolites have not been pro-
duced. In summary, plants that are primed but do not
actually induce resistance save costs if herbivore attack does
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Induced resistance against herbivores 341
not materialize and save time in responding if the attack
does occur.
Priming has the potential to shift the cost–benefit ratio in
favour of induced rather than constitutive resistance. As such,
it would be very informative to know how common priming
is in plant–herbivore interactions. Since it was first reported
in 2004 for maize resistance against caterpillars (Engelberth
et al. 2004), workers have looked for and found evidence for
priming in other systems including lima beans (Heil & Silva
Bueno 2007), poplars (Frost et al. 2007) and blueberries
(Rodriguez-Saona, Rodriguez-Saona & Frost 2009). Cues
released by experimentally damaged sagebrush primed neigh-
bouring wild tobacco to induce resistance to some of its herbi-
vores (Kessler et al. 2006). Priming has been shown to induce
both ‘direct’ resistance mechanisms and ‘indirect’ defences
involving other trophic levels. For example, volatiles from
experimentally damaged corn or lima bean plants primed
neighbouring conspecifics to produce more volatiles or
extrafloral nectar when attacked by herbivores (Heil & Silva
Bueno 2007; Ton et al. 2007). The volatiles or extrafloral nec-
tar attracted arthropods that parasitized or preyed upon her-
bivores. The list of plants for which priming has been
demonstrated is still relatively small although it includes a
variety of plant families, growth forms, and habitats. In the
future we will certainly get a much better sense of whether
priming plays a role in most induced responses or only a lim-
ited representation of examples.
Induced plant responses and herbivore
behaviour
From the plant’s point of view, induced responses will be
most cost effective if herbivores are sensitive to plant traits
that provide resistance and avoid defended plants. Most
examples of induced resistance have been measured from the
point of view of the herbivores – reduced herbivore growth
rates, survival, etc. However, these ‘antibiotic’ effects on her-
bivores may not necessarily provide an advantage to the plant
and few workers have attempted to determine the expected
fitness associated with traits that are presumed to be plant
defences. Herbivores that feed on induced plants and require
a longer time to complete development may be more damag-
ing to plants than herbivores that grow quickly. Herbivore
behaviour is the potential link between herbivore perfor-
mance and plant fitness although herbivore choice has largely
been ignored in our thinking about plant defences (Adler &
Grunbaum 1999). Examining herbivore behaviour may help
us determine the costs and benefits of induction. What do we
know about herbivore choice and movement in response to
changes in plant quality?
Early studies of induced responses to herbivory noted that
herbivores sometimes moved away from locally damaged
plant parts and fed preferentially on undamaged tissues
(Edwards & Wratten 1983). These responses can occur before
the herbivores have even physically contacted the damaged
leaves. For example, plants emit different volatile chemicals
depending upon whether they have been damaged or not and

342 R. Karban
herbivores use these volatile profiles as cues to choose sites for
oviposition (De Moraes, Mescher & Tumlinson 2001). Neo-
nate caterpillars have also been found to use volatiles induced
by conspecific feeding to inform their decisions to stay on
suitable host plants (Carroll, Schmelz & Teal 2008).
Plants can limit the damage that they receive from choosy
herbivores by getting these herbivores to leave or to be
removed by predators and they may also be able to influence
herbivores to feed on neighbours with which they compete.
For example, hornworm caterpillars are most damaging to
their host plants as late instars (older stages). Wild tobacco
plants that were attacked by these caterpillars delayed mount-
ing their maximal induced response until hornworms were
entering their most destructive stages (Van Dam, Hermenau
& Baldwin 2001). At this stage, the estimated cost–benefit
ratio favoured caterpillars that left their natal host plant in
search of a neighbour of the same plant species.
While we have some (surprisingly few) examples of herbi-
vores that respond to plant quality and make choices that
benefit their own performance or those of their offspring, the
scale at which they respond to cues seems very important and
often unknown. There are examples of herbivores that
respond to variation at very local scales; for some systems,
chemical and nutritional differences within individual leaves
have been found to be large and to have profound effects on
herbivore performance (Whitham 1983; Orians, Ardon &
Mohammad 2002; Shelton 2005). Variation at this scale has
been found to affect the spatial distribution of damage within
a plant (Edwards & Wratten 1983; Rodriguez-Saona &
Thaler 2005; Underwood, Anderson & Inouye 2005), and this
distribution of damage can have as large an impact on plant
fitness as the total amount of damage that the herbivore
inflicts (Lowman 1982; Watson & Casper 1984; Marquis
1992; Mauricio, Bowers & Bazzaz 1993; Lehtila 1996).
Herbivores may also make choices at coarser scales; entire
plants can become systemically resistant to their herbivores
and patches of plants may also influence herbivore decisions.
For example, plants may become relatively more or less pre-
ferred by herbivores depending upon the identity and patch
size of their neighbours (associational susceptibility and resis-
tance, reviewed by Barbosa et al. 2009). We have paid far too
little attention to the role of behaviour as a mechanism that
determines the costs and benefits of induced plant changes
and when we have measured behaviour we often have not dis-
tinguished processes that occur at different spatial scales.
The spatial extent of induced resistance
Many of the early reports of induced responses were systemic;
e.g. experimental damage to one part of the plant induced
resistance throughout birch trees (Haukioja & Neuvonen
1985), tomato plants (Pearce et al. 1991), or cotton seedlings
(Karban & Carey 1984). However, for each of these model
systems, subsequent work suggested that the induced resis-
tance was stronger in some regions of the plant, particularly
those close to the site of damage (birches – Tuomi et al. 1988;
tomato – Orians, Pomerleau & Ricco 2000; cotton – Karban
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& Niiho 1995). Many plants are highly sectored such that the
exchange of nutrients, secondary chemicals, and hormones
that mediate plant–herbivore interactions is limited to those
plant tissues that share active vascular connections (Orians &
Jones 2001; Schittko & Baldwin 2003). In other words, the
limited ‘plumbing’ of plants can severely constrain transfer of
the vascular cues and defensive compounds that determine
levels of induced resistance (Viswanathan & Thaler 2004; Ori-
ans 2005; Rodriguez-Saona & Thaler 2005).
Another limitation of vascular communication is that it
may require active transpiration. Woody plants from dry
environments are particularly likely to be highly sectored,
perhaps as a means of conserving moisture or avoiding
hydraulic failure (Waisel, Liphschitz & Kuller 1972; Zanne
et al. 2006; Schenk et al. 2008). These plants are poorly
equipped to use vascular signals to coordinate induced
responses and other physiological processes. These physio-
logical constraints raised the question of whether plants
induce resistance using non-vascular signals.
Volatile cues of induced resistance
Recent evidence indicates that some plants use volatile signals
to coordinate systemic responses. For example, when a
branch of sagebrush is experimentally clipped, other branches
on the same plant become more resistant to subsequent herbi-
vore attack, but only if air flow among branches is permitted
(Karban et al. 2006). Plastic bags that blocked air flow
between the experimentally clipped branch and assay
branches on the same plant prevented communication even
though the clipped and assay branches were physically con-
nected and had the unrealized potential for vascular commu-
nication (Karban et al. 2006). Conversely, air transfer was
sufficient to induce resistance between plants that were sepa-
rated by several metres (Karban et al. 2010). Similar depen-
dence on volatile cues for systemic resistance has been found
recently in lima beans (Heil & Silva Bueno 2007), poplars
(Frost et al. 2007), and blueberries (Rodriguez-Saona, Rodri-
guez-Saona & Frost 2009).
Reliance on volatile rather than vascular cues has several
possible consequences. First, an external volatile signal
becomes public information and other organisms in the
vicinity of the damaged plant may respond to this cue. Some
of the organisms that respond, such as predators or parasites
of the herbivores, may benefit the plant that released the vol-
atile cue (Dicke & van Loon 2000; Kessler & Heil 2011).
However, herbivores and other enemies may also respond to
the volatile cue and cause more subsequent damage to the
emitter plant (refs in Heil & Karban 2010). For example,
parasitic dodder has been found to respond to volatile cues
to locate suitable host plants (Runyon, Mescher & De
Moraes 2006). Neighbours that compete with the plant that
emitted the cue may alter their own defences such that the
neighbours become well matched for their expected risk of
damage. For example, wild tobacco plants in close proxim-
ity (within 15 cm) to clipped sagebrush became more resis-
tant to their shared generalist herbivores and experienced

increased reproductive success compared with tobacco near
unclipped sagebrush (Karban & Maron 2002). A similar
benefit has also been found for lima bean tendrils exposed to
cues from experimentally induced neighbours (Heil & Silva
Bueno 2007).
Secondly, reliance on volatile cues limits the spatial extent
over which the cues will be active. For example, cues between
sagebrush individuals caused changes in resistance of neigh-
bours that were detectable only over distances up to 60 cm
(Karban et al. 2006). Limited signal distance may have many
consequences, negative as well as positive. Limited dispersal
of volatile signals may make it unlikely that a large plant can
communicate with all of its tissues but may also reduce the
likelihood that unrelated neighbours will be able to eaves-
drop on messages since adjacent leaves often belong to the
same individual. Thirdly, vascular cues are constrained by
the particular architecture of the vascular connections
(Orians 2005). Leaves that do not directly share vascular
channels have been found in many plants to have poor physi-
ological integration. Volatile cues allow plants to overcome
this limitation. Fourth, volatile cues move very rapidly,
which reduces lag times involved in signalling relative to vas-
cular cues (Heil 2009). We currently have evidence for vola-
tile communication from approximately 10 model systems
(Heil & Karban 2010) and information about other plant
systems is needed to determine the distribution and com-
monness of volatiles as cues that coordinate induced plant
defences.
If volatile cues are commonly used by plants and eaves-
dropping by neighbouring plants is a significant risk, then
selection may favour cue specificity. Both emitting and receiv-
ing plants may be sensitive to the specific details of the
attacker. We know that different herbivores and different lev-
els of attack cause differential emission of volatiles, although
it remains unknown if plants are sensitive to these chemical
nuances.
We know that other organisms detect the variation in cues.
Parasitic wasps that use volatile cues released by damaged
host plants to locate herbivorous prey have been found to
exhibit high sensitivity to specific cues. For example, special-
ized wasps only respond to the plant cues associated with
their particular host herbivore; this sensitivity allows them to
distinguish the most profitable foraging patches (De Moraes
et al. 1998; Hoballah, Tamo & Turlings 2002). In addition,
different herbivores cause different responses that affect sub-
sequent herbivory. For example, different induced plant
responses to initial attacks by different early season herbi-
vores caused changes that ultimately resulted in predictably
different late-season herbivore communities on milkweeds
(Van Zandt & Agrawal 2004).
As plant susceptibility to herbivory has a strong genetic
component (Karban 1992; Mopper & Strauss 1998; Johnson
& Agrawal 2005), families of related individuals may share
susceptibilities. Risk of attack should be more highly corre-
lated among close relatives, and it makes sense that they may
be particularly sensitive to the cues emitted by their close kin.
The volatiles produced by plants that are damaged by herbi-
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Induced resistance against herbivores 343
vores vary considerably among individuals and also have a
strong genetic component (Hare 2007; Karban & Shiojiri
2009; Schuman et al. 2009). As we know relatively little about
which parts of the volatile profiles are biologically meaning-
ful, it is premature to attempt to evaluate the function of dif-
ferent profiles or the levels of variability among them. It will
be very interesting to determine whether plants that are close
relatives are more effective communicators than plants that
share fewer genes.
The timing of induced resistance
The temporal progression of induced responses will greatly
influence their effectiveness. A repeated conclusion of almost
all models of induced defence (and cycling populations) is the
importance of time-lags (Karban & Baldwin 1997:159–160).
One disadvantage of induced defences relative to constitutive
defences is that plants experience a period of vulnerability
during the time that it takes to activate their induced defences.
Both the lag between damage and the onset of defence and
the lag between the cessation of damage and the relaxation of
defence are critical parameters that determine the effective-
ness and the costs of induction.
The precise time course of induction is difficult to charac-
terize since the state of an individual plant at one time is
auto-correlated with states at other times. Studies that have
characterized the time course suggest that it does not neces-
sarily follow a simple trajectory. Soybeans attacked by Mexi-
can bean beetles became more resistant to subsequent attack
after a lag of up to 3 days (Underwood 1998). This induced
resistance was relaxed 15 days following the initial damage
and after 20 days the plants became more susceptible to
attack than uninduced plants. The greater the induced resis-
tance observed over the early portion of the time course, the
greater the induced susceptibility observed later in the time
course.
We still have relatively few systems for which the complete
time course of induction and particularly, relaxation, are
known. For those systems that have been examined, relaxa-
tion lags are much longer than induction lags. This is true
for systems that induce relatively rapidly as well as systems
that are much slower. Trifolium repens required 38–51 h after
damage to mount a systemic defence but at least 28 days for
it to relax (Gomez, van Dijk & Stuefer 2010). Acacia drepa-
nolobium subjected to browsing by large mammals produced
larger spines than those produced by unbrowsed trees within
approximately 2 months (Young & Okello 1998). However,
relaxation for trees protected from browsing was far more
gradual than induction and continued for more than 5 years
(Young, Stanton & Christian 2003). The time-lag between
initial damage and the onset of the induced response is pre-
sumably set by the physiological constraints of growing new
tissues. In this example involving spines, the time-lag
between cessation of damage and relaxation of the induced
response is presumably set by the reliability of the cue that
risk of damage has passed (Young, Stanton & Christian
2003). In a related Acacia system that had more reliable

344 R. Karban
damage, spine length decreased within 2 years after damage
stopped (Gomez & Zamora 2002). Time-lags involving
chemical defences will generally be shorter and less depen-
dent on the growth of new tissues although reliability of cues
may still be important.
Norm of reaction models of induced resistance
Induced responses are changes in plant phenotype that occur
following attack. Plasticity that is dependent on environmen-
tal conditions has been represented by norm of reaction dia-
grams. In the case of plasticity that involves induced
resistance against herbivory for plants of a single genotype,
two resistance states are represented: induced plants exhibit
greater levels of resistance than uninduced control plants.
Norm of reaction models emphasize differences in the mean
phenotypes of the two categories of plants. When the dia-
grams include measures of variance (and this should always
be the case), that variance generally reflects differences among
the means for multiple individuals within a population rather
than variation within each individual. Norm of reaction mod-
els implicitly ignore variation around the mean resulting from
small scale variation among the different organs within an
individual.
This is an important shortcoming because plants are made
up of repeated, modular units, such as leaves on a branch or
branches on a tree (White 1984; de Kroon et al. 2005; Herrera
2009). These modules vary considerably and measures of var-
iability within an individual commonly exceed variability
among individuals. Most of this variation within individuals
can be explained by plastic responses of modules to environ-
mental conditions (light, resources, damage), interacting with
internal controls (hormones) and tissues at different stages of
development (Herrera 2009).
Induced responses as a source of heterogeneity
As discussed above, induced responses are often highly local-
ized with little integration at the scale of whole plants.
Induced responses that occur as scales smaller than whole
plants increase the heterogeneity of plant traits that are
important to herbivores in time and space. This heterogeneity
occurs over spatial scales ranging from microsites within a
leaf to variation among individual plants as well as over tem-
poral scales from minutes to years (see sections above). Sev-
eral detailed maps of the induction have been instructive.
Young tomato plants damaged by different herbivores
responded by altering levels of defensive oxidative enzymes
measured at the scale of leaflets and leaves (Stout, Workman
& Duffey 1996). When the mean levels of enzyme activity
increased for whole plants, the induced responses were highly
localized so that the intraplant variance increased even more
than the mean levels. Some of the spatial pattern was proba-
bly due to limitations imposed by vascular connections in
these tomato plants (Orians, Pomerleau & Ricco 2000). For
example, following damage to leaf 2, induction was noted in
leaf 5 but not in adjacent leaf 3; similarly, the side of the leaf
Ó 2010 The Author. Functional Ecology Ó 2010 British Ecological Society, Functional Ecology, 25, 339–347
13652435, 2011, 2, Downloaded from https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2010.01789.x by Cochrane Costa Rica, Wiley Online Library on [09/01/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
closest to the direct vascular connection responded more than
the side farther away (Stout, Workman & Duffey 1996). Simi-
larly, leaf veins and midribs of wild tobacco acted as barriers
creating small-scale heterogeneity in the defensive jasmonate
burst produced by plants attacked by caterpillars (Stork et al.
2009). Glucosinolates involved in defence of wild radish also
have been found to respond to damage at very fine scales
(Shelton 2005). Caterpillar feeding on one leaf increased
glucosinolate concentrations for the entire plant but in an
extremely patchy manner. Differences among leaves, and
especially among regions within leaves, were greater than
variation among whole plant responses. No spatial auto-
correlation was found among leaf tissues as close as 1–2 cm
apart (Shelton 2005).
The heterogeneity caused by induced responses is pre-
dicted by several models to reduce herbivore performance
(Adler & Karban 1994; Karban, Agrawal & Mangel 1997;
Shelton 2004; Underwood 2004). According to this hypothe-
sis, variability per se may be defensive, rather than any par-
ticular phenotypic state. Although this hypothesis has
received relatively little attention, several lines of empirical
evidence support it. Gypsy moth caterpillars that were
reared on diets with a constant mean level of nitrogen suf-
fered reduced pupal masses and extended development as
the variation in daily nitrogen increased (Stockhoff 1993).
Similarly, armyworm caterpillars reared on a constant diet
that included cyanide were able to habituate to that toxin
far better than caterpillars that were given diets with variable
levels of cyanide even though cyanide concentrations in the
variable diets never exceeded the dose in the constant diet
(Brattsten et al. 1983).
Variation among bites in space and time is expected to
increase the foraging costs experienced by herbivores (Herre-
ra 2009). In addition, non-linear benefits associated with dif-
ferent levels of plant quality will reduce the expected value of
plants that vary to herbivores (Karban, Agrawal & Mangel
1997; Ruel & Ayres 1999).
Herbivores may be able to alter their physiologies to match
those of their host plants as long as they can predict their
host’s ‘defensive phenotype’. Many of the enzymatic systems
that herbivorous insects employ to detoxify induced plant sec-
ondary chemicals are themselves inducible (Lindroth 1991).
Variability in the secondary chemicals that these insect sys-
tems must face reduces their effectiveness (Berenbaum &
Zangerl 1993, 1996). Corn earworms eavesdrop on the plant
signals that induce production of secondary chemicals which
allows the caterpillars to activate enzyme systems that can
detoxify the induced plant responses (Li, Schuler & Beren-
baum 2002). Herbivorous insects can adjust their feeding
strategies in an attempt to match the defences of their host
plant as long as those defences are predictable. For example,
clutches of pipevine swallowtail caterpillars that start on
undamaged leaves are able to tolerate their plant’s induced
responses. Clutches that are experimentally added to plants
that have already begun inducing defences are unable to toler-
ate them (Fordyce 2006). In these cases, herbivore counter
measures to induced plant responses are only effective if the

herbivores are able to match their host plants and become
ineffective if host quality varies unpredictably.
These are examples of situations in which plant variability
is difficult for herbivores. However, reducing herbivore suc-
cess does not necessarily increase plant fitness. For example,
caterpillars that were fed nutritionally poor plants were able
to compensate by eating more of their lower quality hosts
(Slansky & Feeny 1977). Unfortunately, we know more about
the effects of induced plant responses on herbivore success
than their effects on plant fitness.
There are many possible benefits to plants of using plastic
inducible defences that were outlined by Agrawal & Karban
(1999). If heterogeneity is inherently difficult for herbivores
(see above), advantages of heterogeneous host plants that are
unpredictable to herbivores may occur in ecological time.
Heterogeneous host plants may also present inconsistent tar-
gets of selection for herbivores over evolutionary time
(Whitham & Slobodchikoff 1981; Whitham 1983; Roslin
et al. 2006). These two classes of mechanisms are often
confused. The first class, which posits that induced defences
are more effective in ecological time frames, should be more
generally applicable although it has received less attention.
The second class, involving a moving target over evolutionary
time that herbivores cannot adapt to, is more intuitive
and has been more readily accepted although empirical evi-
dence is difficult to collect (as is the case for all evolutionary
hypotheses).
Conclusion
Induced defences are important because they are widespread
and cause large effects on herbivores. It is worth evaluating
their consequences for the plants that deploy them; plant fit-
ness is the best (and one of the most elusive) currencies to
measure the relevant costs and benefits. Recent advances in
our understanding of the mechanisms of induced responses
such as priming and volatile signalling have changed our
views of their relative costs and benefits. A few decades ago
induced resistance was viewed as an unlikely phenomenon.
Although this is no longer the case, there is still a lot that we
do not understand about induced resistance. A realization
that plant defences are dynamic puts plants on equal footing
in terms of sophisticated behaviours with the herbivores that
attempt to exploit them. This realization has made possible
the nascent fields of plant communication, plant behaviour,
and plant immunity. These less well accepted fields are where
induced resistance was a short time ago.
Acknowledgements
I thank Martin Heil, Mikaela Huntzinger, Marc Johnson, Ariel Novoplansky,
and anonymous reviewers for comments that improved versions of this
manuscript.
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Received 3 June 2010; accepted 2 September 2010
Handling Editor: Marc Johnson