Asking the Ecosystem About the Function of Plant Secondary Metabolites

Plant secondary metabolites, long thought to be metabolic waste products,  are now recognized to play a variety of different ecological roles in the life of a plant that include protection against abiotic and biotic stresses and communication with other plants and heterotrophs in the surrounding community. The best way to uncover the roles that these metabolites play is to query the ecosystem in which the plants evolved; however, the research is this field has a history of anthropomorphic metaphors which may prevent researchers from placing their experiments in an appropriate ecological context. This talk will describe an approach which attempts to “phytopomorphize” the researcher by using field experiments with wild-type and transformed lines of the native tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata, which are silenced in their ability to produce or respond to particular secondary metabolites. Examples of the roles that secondary metabolites play in herbivore defence and pollinator attraction will illustrate the approach.