Alarm against insect attacks

2004/03/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Nekazaritza

(Photo: Free image).

Corn plants can alert other nearby plants to insect attacks. Many plants release volatile substances when attacked by insects, which attract insect predators.

It seems that volatile substances also serve to alert other plants. This conclusion has been obtained through different experiments with maize plants. In these experiments, plants attacked by insects were placed along with healthy corn plants. Contact caused healthy plants to start producing a volatile acid, which is normally produced only by attacked plants.

In addition, according to the researchers, these volatile substances can cause anti-aggression preparation. In fact, affected plants saw that they produced anti-offensive substances faster than others.