Plants respond to herbivory by mounting a defense. Some plant-eating spider mites ( @entity7213 spp.) have adapted to plant defenses to maintain a high reproductive performance. From natural populations we selected three spider mite strains from two species, @entity7213 and @entity7213 evansi, that can suppress plant defenses, using a fourth defense-inducing strain as a benchmark, to assess to which extent these strains suppress defenses differently. We characterized timing and magnitude of phytohormone accumulation and defense-gene expression, and determined if mites that cannot suppress defenses benefit from sharing a leaf with suppressors. The nonsuppressor strain induced a mixture of @entity7214 - (JA) and @entity2697 (SA)-dependent defenses. Induced defense genes separated into three groups: 'early' (expression peak at 1  d postinfestation (dpi)); 'intermediate' (4  dpi); and 'late', whose expression increased until the leaf died. The T.  evansi strains suppressed genes from all three groups, but the @entity7213 only suppressed the late ones. @entity1155 occurred downstream of JA and SA accumulation, independently of the JA-SA antagonism, and was powerful enough to boost the reproductive performance of nonsuppressors up to 45%. Our results show that suppressing defenses not only brings benefits but, within herbivore communities, can also generate a considerable ecological cost when promoting the population growth of a competitor.

Spider mites suppress tomato defenses downstream of jasmonate and XXXX independently of hormonal crosstalk.

@entity7213 :: ('32264', 'Species') :: ['T.  urticae strain', 'Tetranychus', 'Tetranychus urticae'] @entity7214 :: ('MESH:C011006', 'Chemical') :: ['jasmonate'] @entity2697 :: ('CHEBI:30762', 'Chemical') :: ['salicylate'] @entity1155 :: ('MESH:D011596', 'Disease') :: ['Suppression']
@entity2697 :: (CHEBI:30762,Chemical) :: ['salicylate']
