Beneficial worm allies warn plants of parasite attack belowground and reduce aboveground herbivore preference and performance

Four-week-old S. lycopersicum plants were assigned to each of the following three treatment groups: free-nematode tomato plants (Control) (49_54), roots inoculated with M. javanica (31_36), roots inoculated with S. carpocapsae (37_42). Total RNA was extracted using Qiagene RNeasy Plant Mini Kit (Qiagen, Germani). One microgram of total RNA was used as starting material and cDNA libraries were generated using the Truseq stranded total RNA library preparation kit (Illumina, Inc, CA, USA). Paired-ends sequencing was performed on an Illumina Highseq 2500 platform (Illumina, Inc, CA, USA).