Causes and consequences of exotic plant invasions

Widespread biological invasions and altered habitats have resulted in history’s most rapid and intensive modification of natural communities.

Unraveling how such anthropogenic modifications influence the ecological goods and services provided by natural communities is a major goal in ecology and evolution.  Invasive plants are widely assumed to thrive by being unpalatable to and avoided by native herbivores, thus invasions of nutritionally poor and distasteful exotic plants are hypothesized to be evolutionary ‘dead-ends’ that might eventually lead to food-web collapse.

My research utilizes field and laboratory experiments to explicitly test whether herbivores avoid exotic in lieu of native plants, and whether the presence of exotic plants alters significant community and ecosystem properties.