By Susan Milius
INDIANAPOLIS — A common virus turns a squash plant into just the right kind of deceptive advertiser.
When cucumber mosaic virus, known as CMV, infects garden-variety squash plants, the plants smell more alluring to aphids than healthy plants do, reports ecologist Kerry Mauck of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. The infected plants don’t live up to their odor, though. Upon landing on a virus-ridden plant, the aphids take a taste and, yuk, move on.
That swift retreat works out well for the virus, Mauck reported December 14 at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America. CMV spreads when aphids pick up the virus while probing an infected plant and then pass along the hitchhiker to the next leaf they explore. Unlike some other plant viruses, though, CMV lurks only within the outer layer of plant tissue. An aphid picks up virus particles just by tasting the outer cell layers of a leaf.