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The Defensive Chemistry of Land and Water Beetles
Author(s) -
Schildknecht H.
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition in english
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 0570-0833
DOI - 10.1002/anie.197000011
Subject(s) - darwin (adl) , terpene , chemistry , organic chemistry , ecology , botany , biology , computer science , software engineering
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.