Abstract
The relationship between the cinnabar moth, Tyria jacobaeae, a specialist herbivore, and its food plant ragwort, Senecio jacobaea, involves periodic total defoliation (and defloration) of the plant, followed by population crashes of the insect. The insect is not only dependent on ragwort for food, but also for the plant’ secondary chemicals - pyrrolizidine alkaloids - that are sequestered by the larvae and probably function as a protection against natural enemies.
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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van der Meijden, E., Nisbet, R.M., Crawley, M.J. (1998). The dynamics of a herbivore-plant interaction, the cinnabar moth and ragwort. In: Dempster, J.P., McLean, I.F.G. (eds) Insect Populations In theory and in practice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4914-3_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4914-3_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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