The ideal biocontrol agent is a monophagous insect. Only like this we can guarantee that it will not affect other species in the community. The data on host specificity of insect herbivores, are, however, very sparse. Collecting good information of this type requires large scale sampling of insect herbivores on many different species. In this project we suggest an alternative approach using data on large number of traits of the plant and the insect and using this knowledge to predict potential hosts of the herbivores. Specifically we plan to combine field observations of plant herbivore associations with feeding experiment and plant and insect trait measurements including composition of secondary metabolites in the plant. We will use the species traits to predict the results of the field observations and feeding experiment. In this way we will identify traits that can be used to predict host specificity of insect herbivores and thus develop a predictive tool that will allows to identify possible host (en)
Cílem projektu je identifikovat vlastnosti, které umožní predikovat hostitelskou specializaci hmyzích herbivorů a tak identifikovat možné hostitele hmyzu bez časově náročných terénních sledování a pokusů. Verifikovat vytvořený model s využitím dat z USA. (cs)