Helmholtz Zentrum München, Institute of Biochemical Plant Pathology, Research Unit Environmental Simulation (EUS), Neuherberg, Germany.
Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, Freising, Germany.
Plant Cell Environ. 2018 Dec;41(12):2791-2805. doi: 10.1111/pce.13407. Epub 2018 Aug 17.
It is well known that plant volatiles influence herbivores in their selection of a host plant; however, less is known about how the nonvolatile metabolome affects herbivore host selection. Metabolic diversity between intraspecific plants can be characterized using non-targeted mass spectrometry that gives us a snapshot overview of all metabolic processes occurring within a plant at a particular time. Here, we show that non-targeted metabolomics can be used to reveal links between intraspecific chemical diversity and ecological processes in tansy (Tanacetum vulgare). First, we show that tansy plants can be categorized into five subgroups based up on their metabolic profiles, and that these "metabotypes" influenced natural aphid colonization in the field. Second, this grouping was not due to induced metabolomic changes within the plant due to aphid feeding but rather resulted from constitutive differences in chemical diversity between plants. These findings highlight the importance of intraspecific chemical diversity within one plant population and provide the first report of a non-targeted metabolomic field study in chemical ecology.
众所周知，植物挥发物会影响草食动物对寄主植物的选择；然而，关于非挥发性代谢组如何影响草食动物的寄主选择，人们知之甚少。使用非靶向质谱可以描述种内植物之间的代谢多样性，这使我们能够在特定时间内快速了解植物内发生的所有代谢过程。在这里，我们表明非靶向代谢组学可用于揭示内在化学多样性与豚草（Tanacetum vulgare）生态过程之间的联系。首先，我们表明，根据其代谢谱，豚草植物可以分为五个亚组，并且这些“代谢型”影响了田间自然蚜虫的定殖。其次，这种分组不是由于蚜虫取食导致植物内诱导的代谢组变化，而是由于植物之间的化学多样性存在组成性差异所致。这些发现强调了一个植物种群内种内化学多样性的重要性，并首次报道了化学生态学中非靶向代谢组野外研究。
