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Tomatoes can turn plant-eaters into cannibals, study shows

Plants are often seen as taking a passive role in their environments, just hanging out and soaking up the sunlight. But that impression is wrong—plants have many sophisticated ways of influencing their environment, and other plants and animals in it. And this includes leading herbivores down the garden path to cannibalism.

When tomatoes and other plants are munched on by caterpillars, they produce chemicals that act as an alarm signal to neighbors, leading them to produce nasty-tasting substances that ward off herbivores. Mimicking these conditions in the lab, researchers from the University of Wisconsin have shown that well-defended plants induce caterpillars to cannibalize each other.

“On well-defended plants, caterpillars become cannibals much sooner,” says behavioral ecologist John Orrock, lead author of a study describing the findings published July 10 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Read more at Newsweek