Laboratory of Evolutionary Ecology

Visiting Researcher Spotlight: Manidip Mandal

6/30/2022

We are pleased to welcome and host Manidip, a PhD student from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznán, Poland. Manidip’s project involves quantifying volatiles from different species of grasses and determining whether they play a role in oviposition preferences and recruitment of natural enemies of grass-feeding butterflies. Manidip collaborated with our team to learn the pipeline of collecting and analyzing volatiles from grasses. Our collaboration started in May 2022, when Priscila (our PhD student) helped develop a method to collect volatiles from oaks and grasses in Poznán. After finishing the collections, Manidip came to Ceske Budejovice to learn how to analyze volatiles using GC-MS (Gas-Chromatography coupled with Mass Spectrometry). The experiments will show how phytohormone treatments can induce plants to release herbivore-induced plant volatiles that can recruit natural enemies.

Manidip’s PhD project was inspired by his long-standing interest in butterfly biology and chemical ecology. His project aims to determine how the appearance and quality of plants affect oviposition preference in grass-feeding butterflies. The ‘appearance’ includes visual and chemical stimuli such as color, shape, smell, and taste. The ‘quality’ of plants for larval growth and survival will depend on their nutrient content, physical and chemical defenses, and how larvae are adapted to cope with these plant traits.
Grass-feeding butterflies can face challenges associated with grasses as a resource, such as:
1) grasses often have low nutrition
2) they are very diverse and abundant, so it is difficult to identify under natural conditions
In this context, it is crucial to understand what strategies/traits these butterflies evolved to exploit grasses as a resource. Although correlations between appearance and quality likely drive the evolution of host-plant selection, this has not yet been approached comprehensively. Manidip will be very happy to discuss his project, you can contact him: manidip.mandal@amu.edu.pl

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Volf M., Leong J.V., de Lima Ferreira P., Volfová T., Kozel P., Matos-Maraví P., Hörandl E., Wagner N.D., Luntamo N., Salminen J.-P., Segar S.T., Sedio B.E. (2023) Contrasting levels of β‐diversity and underlying phylogenetic trends indicate different paths to chemical diversity in highland and lowland willow species, Ecology Letters, 26: 1599-1571.,DOI: 10.1111/ele.14273

Mezzomo, P., Weinhold, A., Aurová, K., Jorge, L. R., Kozel, P., Michálek, J., Nováková, N., Seifert, C. L., Volfová, T., Engström, M., Salminen, J.-P., Sedio, B. E., & Volf, M. (2023). Leaf volatile and nonvolatile metabolites show different levels of specificity in response to herbivory. Ecology and Evolution, 13, e10123. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10123

Volf M, Volfová T, Seifert CL, Ludwig A, Engelmann RA, Jorge LR, Richter R, Schedl A, Weinhold A, Wirth C, van Dam NM. A mosaic of induced and non-induced branches promotes variation in leaf traits, predation and insect herbivore assemblages in canopy trees. Ecology Letters. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13943

Leong JV, Jorge LR, Seifert CL, Volf M. Quantity and specialisation matter: Effects of quantitative and qualitative variation in willow chemistry on resource preference in leaf-chewing insects. Insect Conservation and Diversity. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12559

Volf M, Weinhold A, Seifert CL, Holicová T, Uthe H, Alander E, Richter R, Salminen JP, Wirth C, van Dam NM. Branch-localized induction promotes efficacy of volatile defences and herbivore predation in trees. Journal of Chemical Ecology. 2021. 47:99-111. DOI: 10.1007/s10886-020-01232-z

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