The dense branches and thorns of plants combine to form a powerful cage like defense structure. This is common in ecosystems where herbivores are under high pressure. However, the evolutionary process of the cage like structure is not yet clear.

The Community Ecology and Protection Research Group of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with researchers from the University of Montpellier in France, discussed the evolution process of cage structure under the influence of herbivores. Research has found through phylogenetic comparisons that the structural defense strategies of plants against large mammals have gradually evolved. Plants produce dense branches under moderate herbivorous pressure, and then form thorns under strong herbivorous pressure. This work emphasizes the adaptive value of dense branches as a defense strategy for herbivores and clarifies that large herbivores are the main driving force in shaping the structure of woody plants.

The related research results are titled Blocking then Sting as a case of two-step evolution of defensive cage architectures in herbivore driven ecosystems and published in Nature Plants. The research work has received support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Yunnan Province.

Paper link