[Jacob-list] Re; What is endophyte?

[Pbs123 at aol.com]

News to me! I've never heard of this. I know that grasses even without these 
endophytes, are already resistant to most insects, only grasshoppers can eat 
the mature leaves of grass. If you look at the pests that concentrate on 
grasses, most eat root material or the new growth at the bottom of the 
leaves, or suck juice out of the leaves. This is so because grasses 
incorporate silica from the soil into their leaf structure as an 
anti-predator measure. Silica is much harder than the chitin in insect jaws 
so most cannot eat grass leaves. Unfortunately for your sheep, silica is also 
harder the enamel in teeth so grazers slowly wear away tooth material from 
eating grasses.
I was reading the other day that the food choices in wild deer populations 
(and I guess by inference other ruminants as well) had more to do with taste, 
good or bad, than nutrition, so if endophytes make the plants less palatable 
it would probably be an effective anti-grazer strategy. Dicot plants often 
use this strategy by producing alkaloids that taste bad (or are poisonous) as 
a herbivore deterrent.

Peter 
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