Fruit defence syndromes: the independent evolution of mechanical and chemical defences

Plants are prone to attack by a great diversity of antagonists against which they deploy various defence mechanisms, of which the two principle ones are mechanical and chemical defences. These defences are hypothesized to be negatively correlated due to either functional redundancy or a trade-off, i.e., plants which rely on increased mechanical defence should downregulate their degree of chemical defence and vice versa. A competing hypothesis …