And more on molds---following up to Anne

[Michael Gochfeld]

Anne Kilmer wrote in response to Stan

> Stanley A. Gorodenski wrote:
>
>  > You said: "How does the moth know this?"  Maybe it doesn't. If there
>  >  is no fungus, the imatures are more successful in not being seen
>  > by the parasitoid (this follows from what you have said). As a
>  > result, the parasitoids will spend less time on plants that don't
>  > have the fungus because they cannot find the larvae. The adult moth
>  >  may be queing off the abundance of parasitoids flying around a
>  > plant while it itself is looking for a suitable plant upon which to
>  >  lay eggs.
>  >
>  > I am just basing this upon my understanding of what you wrote. Maybe more
>  >  information is needed to come up with a better hypothesis.
>  >
>  > Stan
>

ANNE THEN WROTE:

> In my experience, stuff infected by fungus (mold etc.) has a different
> taste from uninfected food. Might this not apply here? The mother moth
> surely "tastes" the plant before ovipositing.
> just speculation ...
> Anne Kilmer
>
>  Many years ago Dan Janzen published a paper in the American Naturalist on why
> spoiled things smell (or taste bad).

The idea was that bacteria and/or fungi "deliberately" metabolize their "food"
(and ours) into nasty smelling stuff as a way of hoarding
the food supply and discouraging other eaters (particularly creatures that have
taste buds and olfaction).  From personal experience it usually works.

The flip side, in another (probably also Janzen paper), was that eggs of various
organisms are delicious because you can't go putting noxious compounds in
proximity to delicate embryos which might experience developmental toxicity.

Mike Gochfeld



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