The papers in this book are organized as follows: insect-plant communities, host-plant selection, genetics and evolution, host-plant resistance and application of transgenic plants, and multitrophic interactions. Besides seven invited papers and a paper with concluding remarks, this volume also contains the short communications of all 115 oral presentations and posters. Included too, are the summaries of four European Science Foundation workshops held over the past two years, where European scientists discussed the state-of-the-art and the future of major topics in insect-plant interactions in order to develop better integrated research programs.
The field of insect-plant interactions nowadays includes almost all of biology, as well as parts of chemistry and physics. It takes a central position in biology because insects are the most abundant animal group, half of them are herbivores and they dominate all terrestrial ecosystems. Knowledge of insect-plant interactions is thus fundamental to an understanding of the evolution of life on Earth.
Two major topics of worldwide concern give this field an extra dimension. First, large amounts of food crops are still lost due to insect pests. With the increasing concern for environmental pollution and the subsequent plans to drastically reduce pesticides, integrated pest management and development of resistant crops become a major focus in agriculture. The importance of the study of insect-plant relationships is thus continuously augmented. Clearly, successful pest control demands sufficient fundamental knowledge of pest-host interactions. Second, such work can contribute towards stopping or even counterbalancing the threatening biodiversity crisis thanks to an understanding of how the interaction of insects and plants has influenced and still influences the diversification and speciation (evolution) of both groups. These problems should, of course, be approached at a multitrophic level.

Inhalt

The importance of herbivore population density in multitrophic interactions in natural and agricultural ecosystems.- The evolution of plant resistance and correlated characters.- Habitat impact on insect communities of annual and perennial grasses.- Predispersal seed predation in the limitation of native thistle.- Preference, tree resistance, or chance: how to interpret differences in gall density among trees?.- Aggregation of aphid galls at 'preferred' sites within trees: do colonizers have a choice?.- Abundance and mortality of a specialist leaf miner in response to shading and fertilization of American holly.- Within-population variation in demography of a herbivorous lady beetle.- Continental-scale host plant use by a specialist insect herbivore: milkweeds, cardenolides and the monarch butterfly.- Resource partitioning of host plants by insects on a geographic scale.- Why do droughts often result in devastating insect epidemics? The African armyworm, Spodoptera exempta, as an example.- The impact of water and nutrient stress on oak leaf quality and gypsy moth performance.- Forest insect trends along an acidic deposition gradient in the central United States.- Birch foliage quality and population density of Eriocrania miners in a pollution-affected area.- Performance of Neodiprion sertifer on defoliated scots pine foliage.- Comparative studies of developmental biology, preference and feeding behavior of Monellia caryella on Juglandaceae native to North America.- Host-plant selection by the tropical butterfly Bicyclus anynana.- Interactions between host-plant information and climatic factors on diapause termination of two species of Bruchidae.- Assessing host-plant suitability in caterpillars: is the weight worth the wait?.- Size, feeding ecology and feeding behaviour of newly hatched caterpillars.- Natural defence of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) against the defoliating insect Euproctis chrysorrhoea.- Estimating costs and benefits of the pyrrolizidine alkaloids of Senecio jacobaea under natural conditions.- Induced chemical defence in Cynoglossum officinale.- Conversion of plant-derived pyrrolizidine alkaloids into insect alkaloids.- Phytoecdysteroids and insect-plant relationships in the Chenopodiaceae.- The non-nutrional relationship of Zonocerus (Orthoptera) to Chromolaena (Asteraceae).- Search behaviour: strategies and outcomes.- Response of the oilseed rape pests, Ceutorhynchus assimilis and Psylliodes chrysocephala, to a mixture of isothiocyanates.- Volatile plant metabolites involved in host-plant recognition by the cabbage seed weevil, Ceutorhynchus assimilis.- The olfactory and behavioural response of seed weevils, Ceutorhynchus assimilis, to oilseed rape volatiles.- Dispersive flight of the cabbage stem weevil.- Responses of the black bean aphid, Aphis fabae, to a non-host plant volatile in laboratory and field.- Aggregation in a flower bud-feeding weevil.- Electroantennogram responses of aphids to plant volatiles and alarm pheromone.- The role of host-plant odour and sex pheromones in mate recognition in the aphid Cryptomyzus.- Comparison of electroantennogram responses by females of the black swallowtail butterfly, Papilio polyxenes, to volatiles from two host-plant species.- Olfactory and visual cues in host-finding in the Burnet moth, Zygaena trifolii.- Specialization of receptor neurons to host odours in the pine weevil, Hylobius abietis.- Plant chemicals involved in honeybee-rapeseed relationships: behavioural, electrophysiological and chemical studies.- Volatiles from soybean foliage detected by means of a TCT-HRGC system: their possible role in insect-plant relationships.- Host-finding by Phoracantha semipunctata: host volatiles, electroantennogram recordings and baited field traps.- Chemical recognition of diverse hosts by Pieris rapae butterflies.- Role of nutrients found in the phylloplane, in the insect host-plant selection for oviposition.- Oviposition stimulant for the cabbage root fly: important new cabbage leaf surface compound and specific tarsal receptors.- Tarsal contact chemoreceptors of the cherry fruit fly, Rhagoletis cerasi: specificity, correlation with oviposition behaviour, and response to the synthetic pheromone.- Dietary mixing in generalist grasshoppers.- Semiochemicals isolated from the eggs of Ostrinia nubilalis as oviposition deterrent in three other moth species of different families.- Roles of chemosensory organs in food discrimination by larvae of the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta.- Sensory responses to the triterpenoid antifeedant toosendanin.- Insect antifeeding activity of some cardenolides, coumarins and 3-nitropropionates of glucose from Coronilla varia.- Seasonal variation in the importance of pollen volatiles on the reproductive biology of the sunflower moth.- Seasonal variation in plant chemistry and its effect on the feeding behaviour of phytophagous insects.- Associative learning in host-finding by female Pieris brassicae butterflies: relearning preferences.- Circadian stability of olfaction in Lobesia botrana.- Whitefly preference-performance relationships.- The role of salts in the feeding behaviour of locusts.- Computer-aided analysis of chemosensory data.- Analysis of sensory information using neural networks.- Azadirachtin treatment and host-plant selection.- The effects of azadirachtin on feeding by Myzus persicae.- Effects of the plant-derived antifeedant polygodial on aphid host selection behaviour.- The geometry of feeding: a new way of looking at insect nutrition.- A common chemical mechanism for insect-plant communication.- Genetics and the phylogeny of insect-plant interactions.- Host-race formation in a leaf-mining moth.- Host-race formation in the two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae).- Variation in the suitability of Barbarea vulgaris (Cruciferae) for the flea beetle Phyllotreta nemorum.- Plant secondary chemistry and the evolution of feeding specialization in insect herbivores: a different perspective.- P…