Individual plants can provide space for various herbivore communities, and multiple herbivores often colonize different parts of the same plant. Plants can therefore play an important role in shaping community composition in ecosystems by mediating interactions among herbivore. Plant-mediated interactions among different folivores or between above-and below-ground herbivores are relatively well understood. However, although important for structural support and nutritional transport, the stem is largely unknown in how it responds to stem-feeding herbivores, or whether leaf- and stem-responses to herbivore attack are integrated. Interestingly, I found that JA signaling is also important for resistance to the stem herbivore, and, interestingly, that N. attenuata induced lignin and chlorogenic acid in stems in the face of stem herbivore attack. I also further found that plant inducible defenses in the pith and in the leaf are not systemically induced other tissues, but systemic induction of JA signaling was asymmetric between the stem and the leaf. I conclude that tissue-localized defense responses allow tissue-specialized herbivores to share the same host and occupy different chemical defense niches in the same hostplant.

• Youngsung Joo(Department of Molecular Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany)