title: Plant-herbivore interactions : The indigestibility of C4bundle sheath cells by grasshoppers.
abstract: Plants with the C4dicarboxylic acid pathway of photosynthetic CO2fixation are generally nutritionally inferior to C3(Calvin cycle) plants as foodstuff for herbivores. A possible contributing factor to this nutritional inferiority is the concentration, in C4plants, of large quantities of nutritional material in very tough, thick-walled vascular bundle sheath cells which herbivores may not be able to break down. Experiments with 10 species of grass-hoppers from different areas in the United States revealed large numbers of unbroken bundle sheath cells, contents intact, in fecal pellets produced when the grasshoppers were fed C4vegetation. We conclude that the material stored in C4bundle sheath cells is at least partially unavailable to herbivores, and that this may contribute to the observed nutritional inferiority of C4vegetation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, Michigan, USA.
authors.forename: Hal
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Caswell
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Michigan State University, Michigan, USA.
authors.forename: Frank C
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Reed