Trichomes are effective against folivory

Resumo

Ecosystems that show greatest heterogeneity have a greater amount of interactions between organisms that are part of their food chains, among these relationships exists the herbivory, thus the present study aims to evaluate the feeding preference of herbivory insects for plants in an area of capoeira vegetation, the hypothesis tested is that insects prefer plants with less trichomes. The survey was performed at the Federal Institute of Maranhão Campus Caxias, in November 2016, during which 600 leaves of different species were sampled, most of which did not show pilosity, and the association test by chi-square indicated that for plants present in "capoeira" there are a greater folivory for those that do not present trichomes on its leaf limb.