Skip to main content
Dryad

Data from: Temperature-dependent, behavioral, and transcriptional variability of a tritrophic interaction consisting of bean, herbivorous mite, and predator

Cite this dataset

Ozawa, Rika et al. (2012). Data from: Temperature-dependent, behavioral, and transcriptional variability of a tritrophic interaction consisting of bean, herbivorous mite, and predator [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vt6bk

Abstract

Different organisms compensate for, and adapt to, environmental changes in different ways and therefore environmental changes affect animal–plant interactions. We consequently assessed the effect of temperature on a tritrophic system of the lima bean, the spider mite Tetranychus urticae, and the predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis. In this system the plant defends itself against T. urticae by emitting volatiles that attract P. persimilis. Over a range of 20 40°C the emission of volatiles by infested plants and the attraction of P. persimilis, peaked at 30°C but the number of eggs laid by T. urticae adults and the number of eggs consumed by P. persimilis, peaked at 35°C. This indicates that the spider mites and predatory mites performed best at a higher temperature than that at which most volatile attractants were produced. We used data from transcriptome pyrosequencing of the mites and found that P. persimilis up-regulated gene families for heat shock proteins (HSPs) and ubiquitin-associated proteins, whereas T. urticae did not. RNA interference-mediated gene suppression in P. persimilis, developed in the current study, revealed that predation on T. urticae eggs by P. persimilis fed with PpHsp70-1 dsRNA was reduced at 35°C, when the expression level of PpHsp70-1 was greatly increased but not at 25°C. Overall, our molecular and behavioral approaches revealed that the mode and tolerance of lima bean, T. urticae, and the predatory mite P. persimilis are distinctly affected by temperature variability, thereby making their tritrophic interactions temperature dependent.

Usage notes