Giles C. Thelen, Jorge M. Vivanco, Beth Newingham, William Good, Harsh P. Bais, Peter Landres, Anthony Caesar and Ragan M. Callaway* Abstract Exotic invasive plants are often subjected to attack from imported insects as a method of biological control. A fundamental, but rarely explicitly tested, assumption of biological control is that damaged plants are less fit and compete poorly. In contrast...

Nematodes are microscopic but complex unsegmented roundworms that are anatomically differentiated for feeding, digestion, locomotion, and reproduction. These small animals occur worldwide in all environments. Most species are beneficial to agriculture; they make important contributions to organic matter decomposition and are important members of the soil food chain. However, some species are pa...

The adjustment of all species, animals and plants, to the Earth's cyclic environments is ensured by their temporal organisation. The relationships between parasites, vectors and hosts rely greatly upon the synchronisation of their biological rhythms, especially circadian rhythms. In this short note, parasitic infections by Protozoa and by microfilariae have been chosen as examples of the depend...

Plants that overcompensate for herbivory are relatively healthier when damaged. In this mutualistic association, the herbivore benefits from the plant, and the plant benefits from the herbivore's actions. As long as the benefit to the plant outweighs the costs imposed by browsing herbivores, this interaction should remain stable. Many apparently parasitic associations can be mutually beneficial...

Chemical information conveyance between organisms has been well established for a wide range of organisms including protozoa, invertebrates, vertebrates and plant-parasitic plants. During the past 20 years, various studies have addressed whether chemical information conveyance also occurs between damaged and undamaged plants and many interesting pieces of evidence have been presented. To date, ...

Parasitic species of the family Orobanchaceae are devastating agricultural pests in many parts of the world. The control of weedy Orobanchaceae spp. is challenging, particularly due to the highly coordinated life cycles of the parasite and host plants. Although host genetic resistance often provides the foundation of plant pathogen management, few genes that confer resistance to root parasites ...

Plant-parasitic nematodes cause considerable damage to global agriculture. The ability to parasitize plants is a derived character that appears to have independently emerged several times in the phylum Nematoda. Morphological convergence to feeding style has been observed, but whether this is emergent from molecular convergence is less obvious. To address this, we assess whether genomic signatu...

Recent studies have suggested that plant genomes have undergone potentially rampant horizontal gene transfer (HGT), especially in the mitochondrial genome. Parasitic plants have provided the strongest evidence of HGT, which appears to be facilitated by the intimate physical association between the parasites and their hosts. A recent phylogenomic study demonstrated that in the holoparasite Raffl...

Extreme haustorial parasites have long captured the interest of naturalists and scientists with their greatly reduced and highly specialized morphology. Along with the reduction or loss of photosynthesis, the plastid genome often decays as photosynthetic genes are released from selective constraint. This makes it challenging to use traditional plastid genes for parasitic plant phylogenetics, an...