A large fraction of our agricultural crops are protected from attack by insect pests by a single protein: the BT toxin.Whether this is a stable pest control strategy remains to be seen, but studies of how native plants have evolved resistance strategies for their eon-long battles with insect herbivores, suggest otherwise.Native plants produce a plethora of secondary metabolites, long thought to be metabolic waste products, but are now recognized to play a variety of different ecological roles in the life of a plant that include protection against abiotic and biotic stresses and communication with other plants and heterotrophs in the surrounding community.