User:Natoleon/sandbox

I will edit this part of the Chemical Defense (Chemical defense#:~:text=Chemical defense is a life, as invertebrate and vertebrate animals.) page:

"Chemical defense is a life history strategy employed by many organisms to avoid consumption by producing toxic or repellent metabolites. >Repellent rather than toxic metabolites are allomones, a sub category signaling metabolites known as semiochemicals.< The production of defensive chemicals occurs in plants, fungi, and bacteria, as well as invertebrate and vertebrate animals. The class of chemicals produced by organisms that are considered defensive may be considered in a strict sense to only apply to those aiding an organism in escaping herbivory or predation. However, the distinction between types of chemical interaction is subjective and defensive chemicals may also be considered to protect against reduced fitness by pests, parasites, and competitors. Many chemicals used for defensive purposes are secondary metabolites derived from primary metabolites which serve a physiological purpose in the organism. Secondary metabolites produced by plants are consumed and sequestered by a variety of arthropods and, in turn, toxins found in some amphibians, snakes, and even birds can be traced back to arthropod prey. There are a variety of special cases for considering mammalian antipredatory adaptations as chemical defenses as well."

Prokaryotes, fungi, and Lichen[edit]
Bacteria of the genera Chromobacterium, Janthinobacterium, and Pseudoalteromonas produce a toxic secondary metabolite, violacein, to deter protozoan predation. Violacein is released when bacteria are consumed, killing the protozoan. Another bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, aggregates into quorum sensing biofilms which may aid the coordinated release of toxins to protect against predation by protozoans. Flagellates were allowed to grow and were present in a biofilm of P. aeruginosa grown for three days, but no flagellates were detected after seven days. This suggests that concentrated and coordinated release of extracellular toxins by biofilms has a greater effect than unicellular excretions. Bacterial growth is inhibited not only by bacterial toxins, but also by secondary metabolites produced by fungi as well. The most well-known of these, first discovered and published by Alexander Fleming in 1929, described the antibacterial properties of a "mould juice" isolated from Penicillium notatum. He named the substance penicillin, and it became the world's first broad-spectrum antibiotic. Many fungi are either pathogenic saprophytic, or live within plants without harming them as endophytes, and many of these have been documented to produce chemicals with antagonistic effects against a variety of organisms, including fungi, bacteria, and protozoa. Studies of coprophilous fungi have found antifungal agents which reduce the fitness of competing fungi. In addition, sclerotia of Aspergillus flavus contained a number of previously unknown aflavinines which were much more effective at reducing predation by the fungivorous beetle, Carpophilus hemipterus, than aflatoxins which A. flavus also produced and it has been hypothesized that ergot alkaloids, mycotoxins produced by Claviceps purpurea, may have evolved to discourage herbivory of the host plant.

Lichens demonstrate chemical defenses similar to those mentioned above. Their defenses act against herbivory and pathogens including bacterial, viral, and fungal varieties. To that end, a variety of chemicals are produced by the lichen's mycobiont, using hydrocarbons produced by the lichen's photobiont. However, a single defensive chemical may serve multiple purposes. Usnic acid, for example, is implicated across anti-bacterial, -viral, and -fungal actions. These chemicals may be stored in various tissue types of the lichen thallus, or they may accumulate on the mycobiont hyphae as extracellular crystals.

Mycobiont-produced acids, including but not limited to, evernic, stictic, and squamatic acids exhibit allelopathy, more specifically, lichen defensive chemicals may inhibit a primary metabolic pathway within competing lichens, mosses, microorganims, and vascular plants including jack pine, white spruce, and garden variety tomato, cabbage, lettuce, and pepper plants. Antimicrobial efforts of lichen are also mediated by various mycobiont-produced acids such as lecanoric and gyrophoric, to name a couple more. Elements of this same range of defensive chemicals was found to inhibit herbivores and insects. Some of these lichen defensive compounds show pharmaceutical potential.

In 2004 the death of hundreds of elk near Rawlins, Wyoming was linked to consumption of tumbleweed shield lichen (Xanthoparmelia chlorochroa). This strangely powerful chemical defense is irregular given that such poisoning is very rare while the consumption of this lichen is fairly regular.