Further Research on Mustard Plants
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Background
The mustard plant family includes some of the most popular vegetables, such as radish, yellow mustard, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cabbage. For them to have become so agriculturally successful, the mustards employed such chemical defenses as glucosinolates to protect themselves from herbivorous insects. However, while certain herbivores simply avoided the plants, others may have evolved an ability to detoxify the plants' defensive chemicals. Perhaps plants counteradapted by intensifying the efficacy of their poisonous chemicals, and perhaps certain insects evolved to the point where they are effectively immune to the plants' glucosinolates.
Over time, both the mustard plants and the herbivorous insects have developed responses to this chemical warfare. The plants with the strongest poisonous chemicals are selected for, making it more difficult for the insects to feed upon them. Particular insects, which became more able to withstand glucosinolates, face less competition from other herbivorous animals to feed on the mustards. As a result, both the herbivorous insects and the mustard plants may have benefited from the coevolution through the acquisition of adaptations, in which each exerts a selective force on the other.
Proposed Experiments and Observations
We propose an experiment in which two patches of mustards are grown under exactly the same environment, with the only difference in the presence of herbivorous insects resistant to glucosinolates. The group of mustard plants without the particular insects will act as the control group, and the other group acts as the experimental group...