Nature’s Sticky Trap: Wild Tomato Trichome Rupture by a Thrips Nymph 🍅🪰
- PlantHouse Enterprise
- 2 days ago
- 1 min read
Published on: 10 June 2025
Witness the real-world application of a plant's "chemical landmine" defense. This color video captures a thrips nymph (Frankliniella occidentalis) navigating a section of wild tomato stem (Solanum habrochaites), where it inadvertently triggers the rupture of a Type VI glandular trichome.
In this interaction, the insect’s leg applies mechanical stress to the trichome’s glandular head, causing a sudden brittle fracture at the intermediate cell junction. This ultra-fast event—occurring in less than a millisecond—instantly releases a reservoir of stored secondary metabolites. The video highlights how the released fluid wets the insect's body, transforming from a liquid droplet into sticky, adhesive filaments that can immobilize the pest.
Keywords: plant biomechanics, plant–insect interactions, trichomes
Citation:
Jared Popowski, Lucas Warma, Alicia Abarca Cifuentes, Petra Bleeker, Maziyar Jalaal, Glandular trichome rupture in tomato plants is an ultra-fast and sensitive defense mechanism against insects, Journal of Experimental Botany, Volume 76, Issue 21, 25 November 2025, Pages 6508–6519, https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/eraf257
Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 - Creative Commons
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