The Defensive Chemistry of Land and Water Beetles

✍ Scribed by Prof. Dr. H. Schildknecht

• Book ID: 102725285
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1970
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 869 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0044-8249
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.197000011

✦ Synopsis

Wherever life forms have arisen, they have had to defend themselves, even on the lowest levels, against their own kind. Darwin called this the struggle for life. The following discussion shows that this struggle can be carried on chemically with compounds of widely differing classes. Examples of defensive substances found are hot quinones in bombardier

beetles, and weak and strong carboxylic acids, phenols, terpenes, steroids, and alkaloids in other Adephaga.