Maximilien A. C. Cuny

Cirad - La recherche agronomique pour le développement | CIRAD · Centre de Biologie et Gestion des Populations (CBGP)

There is increasing evidence that host–parasitoid interactions can have a pronounced impact on the microbiome of host insects, but it is unclear to what extent this is caused by the host and/or parasitoid. Here, we compared the internal and external microbiome of caterpillars of Pieris brassicae and Pieris rapae parasitized by Cotesia glomerata or...

Hyperparasitoids are ubiquitous components of terrestrial food webs. They must find their inconspicuous parasitoid host in a complex environment to generate offspring, but their foraging behaviour is poorly understood. Herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) induced by parasitized caterpillars have been found to be exploited by hyperparasitoids i...

Parasitoids induce physiological changes in their herbivorous hosts that affect how plants respond to herbivory. The signature of parasitoids on induced plant responses to feeding by parasitized herbivores indirectly impacts insect communities interacting with the plant. The effect may extend to parasitoids and cause indirect interaction between pa...

In response to herbivory, most plant species adjust their chemical and morphological phenotype to acquire induced resistance to the attacking herbivore. Induced resistance may be an optimal defence strategy that allows plants to reduce metabolic costs of resistance in the absence of herbivores, allocate resistance to the most valuable plant tissues...

Upon parasitism, many parasitoids inject symbiotic viruses and venom into their host. Thereby, they modify the hosts physiology including its saliva composition and, in turn, plant perception of herbivory. It has been hypothesised that parasitoids manipulate plant responses to increase their host performance and maximise their own fitness. However,...

Tritrophic interactions among plants, herbivorous insects and their parasitoids have been well studied in the past four decades. Recently, a new angle has been uncovered: koinobiont parasitoids, that allow their host to keep feeding on the plant for a certain amount of time after parasitism, indirectly alter plant responses against herbivory via th...

When feeding on a plant, herbivorous insects alter the quality of the plant as a food source. This affects other organisms interacting with the same plant. These so‐called ‘plant‐mediated interactions’ can be altered by parasitoids that attack the herbivores. So far, this research area has mainly focussed on interactions at the leaf level, and very...

Plants are members of complex communities of which arthropods are the most speciose members. The role of carnivores in shaping the outcome of multi‐trophic interactions by top‐down control of herbivores has been well studied. Particularly, the positive impacts of natural enemies of herbivores on plants through direct (consumptive) and indirect (non...

Plant domestication often reduces plant defenses by selection on chemical and physical defense traits. Thus, it is expected that herbivorous insects perform better on crop varieties than on their wild relatives. However, recent studies show that this pattern is not ubiquitous. We examined how varieties of squash ( Cucurbita spp.) domesticated for d...

The successful development of parasitoids of herbivores depends on the quality of their host, which is often affected by the host plant. Therefore, a parasitoid’s oviposition decisions will directly depend on the host, but also on plant quality. Here, we investigated the direct effects of host species and the indirect effects of the host’s food pla...

The interaction between the seed beetle Zabrotes subfasciatus and its parasitoid Stenocorse bruchivora, was investigated on seeds of two populations of wild lima bean, Phaseolus lunatus. By manipulating the number of beetle larvae per seed and the presence of parasitoids, we determined how factors related to beetle larvae density, the seed in which...

Organisms of the third trophic level can indirectly interact with plants. However, whether parasitoids of herbivores have a positive effect on plant fitness has been controversial. In addition to possible effects on plant fitness, parasitoid‐mitigated herbivory can modify plant physiological responses and thereby alter the plant‐mediated indirect i...

We investigated a possible role of CNGs in seeds as nitrogen storage compounds that influence plant growth, as well as seedling resistance to herbivores. Using seeds from four different wild lima bean natural populations that are known to vary in CNG levels we tested two non-mutually exclusive hypotheses: 1) seeds with higher levels of CNGs produce...

Lima bean plants (Phaseolus lunatus) exhibit compensatory growth responses to herbivory. Among the various factors that have been identified to affect plant compensatory growth are the extent and type of tissue damage, the herbivore's feeding mode and the time of damage. Another factor that can greatly impact plant responses to herbivory, but has b...

Plant domestication is assumed to result in reduced levels of defensive compounds in crops, because this makes the plants more suitable for consumption by humans and livestock. We argue that this should mainly be reflected in the concentrations of defense compounds in the plant parts that are used for consumption and not necessarily for other parts...

The domestication of beans has selected for larger seeds in cultivated plants compared to their wild relatives. This has not only resulted in an enhanced resource for humans, but also for the insects that feed on these seeds. Seed beetles that attack wild and cultivated seeds often lay several eggs on a single seed. We hypothesized that the larger...

• Following herbivore attack, plants can either reduce damage by inducing defenses or mitigate herbivory effects through compensatory growth and reproduction. It is increasingly recognized that such induced defenses in plants are herbivore-specific, but less is known about the specificity of compensatory responses. Damage by multiple herbivores may...