Studying the biochemical responses of different plant species to insect herbivory may help improve our understanding of the evolution of defensive metabolites found in host plants and their role in plant-herbivore interactions. Untargeted metabolic fingerprints measured as individual mass features were used to compare metabolite reactions in three Brassicales host-plant species (Cleome spinosa,...

New Zealand Journal of Ecology (1998) 22(2): 173-180 ©New Zealand Ecological Society suggested as a diagnostic feature of the plant (Beever, 1987). Although C. scriptaria feeds on some other host plants (Spiller and Wise, 1982) and kawakawa is host to a few other herbivore species (Spiller and Wise, 1982; Clare and Singh, 1988), kawakawa is the primary host plant of C. scriptaria larvae (Hudson...

Inbreeding can profoundly affect the interactions of plants with herbivores as well as with the natural enemies of the herbivores. We studied how plant inbreeding affects herbivore oviposition preference, and whether inbreeding of both plants and herbivores alters the probability of predation or parasitism of herbivore eggs. In a laboratory preference test with the specialist herbivore moth Abr...

1. Host plant density can affect insect herbivore oviposition behaviour, which can, in turn, affect both plant and herbivore populations. Because clear generalisations about density effects on oviposition remain elusive, a better understanding of underlying mechanisms is needed. One such mechanism is plantmediated effects (i.e. changes in plant traits with density), which are often suggested bu...

Foliar endophytic fungi live inside healthy plant leaves, and in some cases they confer herbivore resistance to the host. All previous studies of endophyte–herbivore interactions have occurred in temperate areas, and many use correlations rather than experiments. In Panama, Glomerella cingulata is a common endophyte species found in healthy leaves, and Chelymorpha alternans is a common herbivor...

We study the combined evolutionary dynamics of herbivore specialization and ecological character displacement, taking into account foraging behavior of the herbivores, and a quality gradient of plant types. Herbivores can adapt by changing two adaptive traits: their level of specialization in feeding efficiency and their point of maximum feeding efficiency along the plant gradient. The number o...

Estimating herbivore density is an important part of understanding their impact on vegetation. Many studies have been carried out on the impact of reindeer and other herbivores on arctic and sub-arctic vegetation, but they are difficult to compare as they typically use different methods to estimate herbivore activities. The aim of this study was to compare three methods that were based on the r...

Exploring the spatial distribution of variation in plant secondary metabolites is critical for understanding the evolutionary ecology of biochemical diversity in wild organisms. In the present study, concentrations of foliar sideroxylonal, an important and highly heritable defense chemical of Eucalyptus melliodora, displayed strong, fine-scale spatial autocorrelation. The spatial patterns obser...

Herbivores are important drivers of plant species coexistence and community assembly. However, detailed mechanistic information on how herbivores affect dominance hierarchies between plant species is scarce. Here, we used data of a multi-site herbivore exclusion experiment in grasslands to assess changes in the cover of 28 plant species in response to aboveground pesticide. application. Moreove...

The Pacific islands off southern California, U.S.A. and Baja California, Mexico hold potential for the conservation and restoration of California Mediterranean coastal ecosystems. However, the presence of exotic herbivores and invasive plants pose threats to these systems. Here, we use introduced herbivore removal as a large-scale experimental manipulation to examine the importance of topdown a...