Researcher Melvin Dyer and his colleagues from the University of Georgia, US, have discovered a peculiar relationship or synergy. while a bug cats a plant, it also secretes a growth-promoting protein, which it supplies to the part of the plant it does not consume. Dyer has found this protein in grasshoppers. Apparently, the grasshopper also makes the plants more responsive to its own proteins, called auxins (Discover, October 1995).