Induced plant responses and information content about risk of herbivory

Plant defenses are plastic when a single genotype can produce different phe notypes depending upon the environment. Plastic responses might be favored by selection only if plants can respond appropriately to reliable informati on in their environments. Recent findings indicate that when information is accurate, plants can benefit by changing their defenses appropriately but, when information is inaccurate they produce inappropriate defenses and hav e lower fitness. Plants can potentially use a variety of cues to adjust the ir defensive phenotypes appropriately. The relationship between the informa tion about risk of herbivory and plant defense can be evaluated by determin ing if the information available to plants is reliable enough to support th e evolution of plastic-induced defenses.