Abstract: Insects and plants are important components of biological community in nature and have evolved complex interactions during the long-term evolution process. For example, plants have evolved complex defense strategies to resist insect damage, meanwhile, insects have also evolved more adaptive ways to get more resources for survival. Therefore, studies that focus on the mutual adaptation between insects and host plants are important for effective pest control and cultivation of insect-resistant plants. In the study of the interactions between insects and host plants, the effective components of the oral secretions from herbivorous insects such as saliva or regurgitant liquid, egg secretions, intestinal compounds and microorganisms as the intermediate media to connect insects and plants not only play important roles in inducing or enhancing plant defense, but also have some functions of inhibiting or weakening plant defense. Therefore, according to the role played by the effective components, the oral secretions from herbivorous insects can be divided into elicitors and effectors. In this review article, we introduced the main types of insect effectors including calciumbinding proteins, enzymes and venom proteins, and elicitors including fatty acid amino acid conjugates, polypeptides and enzymes, and the main ways of mediating plant defense from the perspective of insect secretion, clarified the different strategies of herbivorous insects adapting to plant defense, which not only contribute to the in-depth analysis of the interaction mechanism between insects and plants, but also provide new ideas for green and effective pest control and breeding of plant resistant varieties.

Key words: Insects, plants, effectors, elicitors, visualization analysis, herbivorous insects, interaction