PLANT-CHEMICAL DEFENSE - MONOTERPENES AND THE GROWTH-DIFFERENTIATION BALANCE HYPOTHESIS

Recent studies of allocation to defensive chemicals in plants have pro vided insights into the ecological controls over plant defensive chemi cals. Both developmental and ecological studies now suggest that we ca n understand the factors influencing allocation to defense by examinin g the relative availability of resources, external needs for chemical defense, and the internal demands for growth that plants face. These s tudies have also shed light on one of the more popular theories in pla nt evolutionary ecology, the growth-differentiation balance hypothesis of plant resource allocation.