#9420502 Rauscher This proposal seeks funding for the sixth Gordon Conference on the Chemistry of Plant-Herbivore Interactions to be held in January 1995 in Oxnard, California. The focus of this conference will be a critical assessment of the directions in which the study of Plant-Herbivore Interactions is heading, as well as identification of the crucial outstanding problems in this subdiscipline. In addition, a major goal of this conference will be to determine if and how plant-herbivore systems can contribute to conceptual generalizations in larger disciplines such as chemistry, behavior, physiology and ecology. The conference program is designed to facilitate discussion of several specific topics: 1) Is there a coherent, general conceptual framework for understanding chemical interactions between plants and herbivores? Is attempting to construct such a framework desirable? 2) Are there general principles that cut across taxa and environments and apply to many, if not most, plant-herbivore systems? Or must each system be studied as a special case? 3) What are the important unresolved conceptual issues and unsolved problems that need to be addressed in this field? 4) How can the study of plant-herbivore systems contribute to conceptual advancement of major disciplines such as chemistry, physiology, behavior, ecology, and evolution? %%% The timing of this conference is ideal. The study of plant-herbivore interactions is now in a stage where vast amounts of data have been collected and it is now time to step back and synthesize. This subdiscipline has important contributions to make on management of crop systems which annually suffer huge economic losses to pests. Clearer understanding of the chemical underpinnings of the discipline can lead to more ecological forms of pest management
