Nutrient availability and herbivory control the biomass of primary producer communities to varying degrees across ecosystems. Ecological theory, individual experiments in many different systems, and system-specific quantitative reviews have suggested that (i) bottom-up control is pervasive but top-down control is more influential in aquatic habitats relative to terrestrial systems and (ii) bott...

Understanding the role of consumers in density-dependent plant population dynamics is a long-standing goal in ecology. However, the generality of herbivory effects across heterogeneous landscapes is poorly understood due to the pervasive influence of context-dependence. We tested effects of native insect herbivory on the population dynamics of an exotic thistle, Cirsium vulgare, in a field expe...

Plant-herbivore interactions mediate the trophic structure of ecosystems. We use a comprehensive data set extracted from the literature to test the relative explanatory power of two contrasting bodies of ecological theory, the metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) and ecological stoichiometry (ES), for per-capita and population-level rates of herbivory across ecosystems. We found that ambient tempe...

Plants generally respond to herbivore attack by increasing resistance and decreasing growth. This prioritization is achieved through the regulation of phytohormonal signaling networks. However, it remains unknown how this prioritization affects resistance against non-target herbivores. In this study, we identify WRKY70 as a specific herbivore-induced, mitogen-activated protein kinase-regulated ...

Wild radish is an annual plant that exhibits broad spectrum induced resistance to herbivores. In two experiments, we placed potted plants [control, manually clipped, and damaged byPieris rapae(L.) larvae] in theÞeld andassayed forovipositionbyP. rapae(a specialist herbivore), damage by ßea beetles (a specialist herbivore), and damage by rabbits (a generalist herbivore). Induced responses attrac...

The potential to increase parasitism by Cotesia marginiventris through response to chemical signals emitted by herbivore-damaged plants was investigated in corn and cotton field plots. Recruitment of feral C. marginiventris adult females was measured by increased parasitism. Spodoptera frugiperda larvae placed in the field plots and then recollected experienced a mean rate of parasitism of appr...

Multitrophic interactions play key roles in the origin and maintenance of species diversity, and the study of these interactions has contributed to important theoretical advances in ecology and evolutionary biology. Nevertheless, most biodiversity inventories focus on static species lists, and prominent theories of diversity still ignore trophic interactions. The lack of a simple interaction me...

Herbivores can often control plant dynamics by mediating positive feedbacks in plant species’ influence on nutrient cycling. In a 7-yr field experiment in a nitrogenlimited Minnesota oak savanna, we tested whether herbivores accelerated or decelerated nitrogen (N) cycling through their effects on plants. We measured effects of excluding insect (primarily Orthoptera and Homoptera) and mammalian ...

Plants produce chemical defense compounds to resist herbivore attack either by repelling the herbivores or attracting natural enemies of the herbivores. We have previously shown that volatile compounds from cotton released in response to herbivory by conspecifics reduce oviposition in cotton leafworm moth Spodoptera littoralis. It remained, however, unclear whether herbivore-induced changes als...

Enemy release is frequently posed as a main driver of invasiveness of alien species. However, an experimental multi-species test examining performance and herbivory of invasive alien, non-invasive alien and native plant species in the presence and absence of natural enemies is lacking. In a common garden experiment in Switzerland, we manipulated exposure of seven alien invasive, eight alien non...