Living Chemical Plants: Chemical Defense in Leaf Beetle Larvae

In response to herbivorous insects plants produce a variety of natural compounds. Many beetle species developed sophisticated strategies to deal with these substances allowing colonization of habitats non attractive for other organisms. Frequently the plant derived compounds are used by the herbivores for their own interaction with the environment. Studying such detoxification strategies is one of the important topics in chemical ecology. They manipulate not only the evolution of beetles and plants but also of other species living in an ecosystem.