Oxford University Press, USA
Fortress Plant: How to Survive When Everything Wants to Eat You
Key Metrics
- Dale Walters
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Hardcover
- 9780198745600
- 9.3 X 6.2 X 1 inches
- 1.15 pounds
- Science > Life Sciences - Botany
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
But plants are master survivors, having coped with changing environments and evolving predators over much of the history of life on earth. They have surveillance systems and defences that would put most modern armies to shame. They need to have a formidable armoury, because their enemies have sophisticated weaponry of their own. In this often hostile world, battles are fought daily, often to the death. These battles are not trivial - they matter, because life on this fragile planet of ours depends on plants.
In this book Dale Walters takes readers on a journey through these battlefields, exploring how predators try to fool plants' surveillance systems and, if they manage to do so, how they gain access to the nourishment they require. Incredibly, successful attackers can manipulate plant function in order to suppress any attempt by the plant to mount defensive action, while at the same time ensuring a steady supply of food for their own survival. Walters shows how plants respond to such attacks, the defences they use, and how the attacked plant can communicate its plight to its neighbours. These skirmishes represent the latest stage in an unending evolutionary war between plants and organisms that feed on them. These battles might be on a micro scale, but they are every bit as fierce, complicated, and fascinating as the battles between animal predators and prey.
Author Bio
I am Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). Before I retired in 2016, I was leader of the Crop Protection research team at SRUC’s campus in Edinburgh. My research interests included induced resistance to plant pathogens, novel approaches to plant disease control, and plant-pathogen interactions. For 35 years I taught Plant Biotic Interactions, Plant Pathology and Plant Responses to Stress, to final year undergraduates.
I have written two textbooks (Plant Defense: warding off attack by pathogens, herbivores, and parasitic plants and Physiological Responses of Plants to Attack ) and edited three others (Induced Resistance for Plant Defense, Disease Control in Crops, and Molecular Biology in Crop Protection). I have also written a popular science book – Fortress Plant: how to survive when everything wants to eat you, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. My latest popular science book, Chocolate Crisis: Climate Change and Other Threats to the Future of Cacao, was published by University Press of Florida on 5 January 2021.
I was born in Tenby, a small seaside town in Pembrokeshire in west Wales in 1957, but spent most of my childhood in Trinidad, where I was lucky to attend Queen’s Royal College in Port-of-Spain (picture on left). I travelled back to the UK for my university education and did my undergraduate degree at Wye College, University of London, and then travelled north, where I studied for my PhD at Lancaster University. Eighteen years later, I was awarded a DSc from Lancaster University for my research on plant-pathogen interactions. I became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 1998.
I live in Prestwick on the beautiful west coast of Scotland with my wife, two dogs, Sparky and Gizmo, and our lovely black cat, Magic.
Source: dale-walters.com
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