TY - JOUR
T1 - An alternate route to insect pharmacophagy
T2 - The loose receptor hypothesis
AU - Tallamy, Douglas W.
AU - Mullin, Christopher A.
AU - Frazier, James L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments—Published as Contribution Paper No. 715 of the Department of Entomology and Applied Ecology, University of Delaware, Newark. This research was partially supported by USDA-NRI grant 9301684 to D.W.T. and 9537302 to C.A.M.
PY - 1999
Y1 - 1999
N2 - The phagostimulatory response of some diabroticite cucumber beetles toward triterpene cucurbitacins is used as a model in support of an alternative hypothesis explaining the evolution of pharmacophagous feeding behavior in insects. Whereas the use of noxious compounds from nonhost sources for purposes other than nutrition or host-plant recognition (pharmacophagy) has historically been explained in terms of the ancestral host hypothesis, we suggest that the less than perfect specificity of the binding properties of some peripheral receptors provides an opportunity for novel compounds sharing the configuration and polarity of target molecules to elicit a feeding response by coincidence rather than adaptive design.
AB - The phagostimulatory response of some diabroticite cucumber beetles toward triterpene cucurbitacins is used as a model in support of an alternative hypothesis explaining the evolution of pharmacophagous feeding behavior in insects. Whereas the use of noxious compounds from nonhost sources for purposes other than nutrition or host-plant recognition (pharmacophagy) has historically been explained in terms of the ancestral host hypothesis, we suggest that the less than perfect specificity of the binding properties of some peripheral receptors provides an opportunity for novel compounds sharing the configuration and polarity of target molecules to elicit a feeding response by coincidence rather than adaptive design.
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U2 - 10.1023/A:1021024420353
DO - 10.1023/A:1021024420353
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0032875157
SN - 0098-0331
VL - 25
SP - 1987
EP - 1997
JO - Journal of Chemical Ecology
JF - Journal of Chemical Ecology
IS - 9
ER -