Larva Gets Hooked on Taste of Potato

The potato is the Achilles’ heel of the tobacco hornworm larva, biologist Marta del Campo of Cornell University and her colleagues said. Normally, the hornworm larva will eat virtually any type of foliage. But once it has tasted potatoes, nothing else will do. The larva would rather starve to death than eat anything else, the team reported in last week’s Nature. The key seems to be a chemical called indioside D that is present in potatoes. Indioside D apparently modifies taste buds in the larva’s mouth so that other foods taste bad. The discovery may lead to a new way to control the pest.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II