A PharmEcological Perspective of Terrestrial and

Authors: Jennifer Sorensen Forbey M Denise Dearing Elisabeth M Gross Colin M Orians Erik E Sotka William J Foley

Publish Date: 2013/03/13

Volume: 39, Issue: 4, Pages: 465-480

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Abstract

We describe some recent themes in the nutritional and chemical ecology of herbivores and the importance of a broad pharmacological view of plant nutrients and chemical defenses that we integrate as “Pharmecology” The central role that dose concentration and response to plant components nutrients and secondary metabolites play in herbivore foraging behavior argues for broader application of approaches derived from pharmacology to both terrestrial and aquatic plantherbivore systems We describe how concepts of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are used to better understand the foraging phenotype of herbivores relative to nutrient and secondary metabolites in food Implementing these concepts into the field remains a challenge but new modeling approaches that emphasize tradeoffs and the properties of individual animals show promise Throughout we highlight similarities and differences between the historic and future applications of pharmecological concepts in understanding the ecology and evolution of terrestrial and aquatic interactions between herbivores and plants We offer several pharmecology related questions and hypotheses that could strengthen our understanding of the nutritional and chemical factors that modulate foraging behavior of herbivores across terrestrial and aquatic systemsWe thank Randi Rotjan and Joshua Idjadi and four anonymous reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript and Kathy Smith for assistance with formatting the manuscript We thank the National Science Foundation 0827239 to JSF for funding the PharmEcology Symposium at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology 2010 that stimulated many of the ideas in this manuscript We also thank National Science Foundation Grant IOS0817527 and DEB1146194 to MDD and JSF respectively the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0986142 to WJF the German Science Foundation DFG CRC454 project A2 to EMG and the National Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture 20073530218351 to CMO

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