Comments on: The Poison in the Leaf: Macro Evolutionary Patterns in Plant-Herbivore Co-Evolution https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/ Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:38:17 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.8 By: DuWayne https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539853 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:38:17 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539853 …rather than avoiding the neurotoxin, liked it and spread the little plants’ seeds all over the Western hemisphere.

Ahh, D.C., we humans love our neurotoxins, whether they are peppers or the mandrake Greg so kindly mentioned. I have always been rather intrigued by this fascination with the neurotoxins, especially given my general fondness for the ones that do funny things to reality – ironic, given that I am only mildly into the types that make food spicy…

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539852 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:26:30 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539852 Note: Capsicum is a genus, the family is Solanaceae, which is a remarkable family including the tomato, the potato, the peppers, and tobacco. It even included mandrake, which apparently, if you pull it out of the ground without wearing special headsets, screams in such a way that it kills you.

]]> By: Nathan Myers https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539851 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:11:15 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539851 I think somebody called that “exapting” before everyone realized it was identically the same, in practice, as what we were already calling evolution.

]]> By: D. C. Sessions https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539850 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:10:52 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539850

And yet we humans sure do love our hot peppers. Or at least, some of us do.

Isn’t that a hoot?

Here you have the capsicum family, apparently a scrubby little patch of undistinguished plants in southern Arizona, defending itself from mammals with a neurotoxin which doesn’t keep birds from eating the fruit and dropping seeds in their droppings.

Then, about 15KYA, along came a bunch of mammals heading south which were disfunctional enough that rather than avoiding the neurotoxin, liked it and spread the little plants’ seeds all over the Western hemisphere. A few thousand years later, it was the same neurotoxin that had the peppers spread to Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Epic defensive fail, or screwball evolutionary coincidence?

]]> By: Jason Thibeault https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539849 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:50:17 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539849 And yet we humans sure do love our hot peppers. Or at least, some of us do.

]]> By: D. C. Sessions https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539848 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:38:46 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/15/the-poison-in-the-leaf-macro-e-1/#comment-539848 Note that the specialist herbivores cause a different set of game theory constraints. Being specialists, they evolve counter-defenses against plant defenses — but unlike generalists they also can’t afford to wipe out their food source.

This is all reminiscent of the battles going on around my house, where spurges don’t so much avoid being eaten as count on it.

Then there’s the capsicum family, which uses selective poisons to make sure that only the right herbivores eat them.

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