A versatile transport network for sequestering and excreting plant glycosides in leaf beetles provides an evolutionary flexible defense strategy.

The larval defenses of chrysomeline leaf beetles comprise components that are either synthesized de novo or sequestered from their food plants. Both biosynthetic modes are based on glucosides that serve as substrates and forms of transport. The defensive glands import the compounds through highly selective glucoside transporters from a circulating pool in the hemolymph. Here we address the selectivity of the different transport systems with larvae of Chrysomela populi, an obligate sequestering species, and with larvae of Phaedon cochleariae, producing nonaterpene iridoids. Both species possess an interconnected network of transport systems for uptake and excretion. The glucosides are imported by the gut membrane with low selectivity. Their excretion by the Malpighian tubules is similarly unselective, but the uptake of the glucosides from the hemolymph into the defensive system is specific. Only the genuine glucoside precursors made de novo or sequestered from the plant are imported. The successful combination of the precursor-adapted pathways of excretion and defense has probably allowed many leaf beetle species to adaptively radiate onto, and coevolve with plants that offer appropriate glucoside precursors.