The Significance of Secondary Metabolites for Interactions between Plants and Insects

Abstract

333 Although a comprehensive overview on functions of chemical and morphological features of plants in their relation to herbivores was published by Stahl in 1988(1), plant! animal-interactions on the basis of their secondary metabolites were nearly totally ignored and were not accepted by more than one generation of biologists. This situation was changed when in the late nineteen fifties a series of review papers appeared ; a selection of excellent reviews (2-9) includes the first of Fraenkel (2) which had again revived this topic. It is evident from the diversity of authors that they represent several disciplines of the natural sciences, showing that work in this field requires interdisciplinary cooperation. Two papers published recently (8, 9) are excellent summaries of the present knowledge.