Project properties
Title Exploring plant defence strategies to deal with attack by multiple herbivores
Group Entomology, Laboratory of
Project type thesis
Credits 24-36
Supervisor(s) Erik Poelman, Maxence Longuemare
Examiner(s) Erik Poelman
Contact info erik.poelman@wur.nl, maxence.longuemare@wur.nl
Begin date 2024/03/01
End date 2026/09/01
Description In nature, plants are confronted with a plethora of insect herbivores which have been driving the evolution of plant defences for more than 400 million years. Plants have developed plastic defensive strategies to be resistant or tolerant against their diverse and, sometimes, unpredictable antagonist communities. While our understanding on plant-insect interactions has greatly improved over the past decade, most studies have focused on single or dual herbivore attack which do not capture the complexity of interactions occurring in natural ecosystems. Which growth-defence strategies plants may deploy to defend themselves under situation of attack by multiple herbivores are thus largely unexplored.
Do you want to investigate how plants deal with attack by multiple herbivores, how spatial and temporal variation in herbivore attack affects defence plasticity, and how these strategies vary between related plant species and are regulated at the molecular level? Please contact us.
Used skills Depending on your interests and the availability of projects: greenhouse experiments, qPCR, metabolomic and transcriptomic analysis, statistics in R
Requirements For an MSc-thesis or internship at Entomology, the following requirements apply: ENT-30806 + a second ENT-course (preferably ENT-30306 or ENT-50806 or ENT-53806). As an alternative for the second ENT-course, PHP-30806 or BHE-30306 can be selected.
Note: these requirements do not apply for MBI students; MBI students should check the requirements for doing an ENT MSc-thesis or internship in the study programme of their specialisation.