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The enemy escape hypothesis: Introduced plants escape their
specialized herbivores, pathogens and competitors and
liberation from these specialist pests enables exotic plants
to have greater performance than natives, enhancing their
competitive ability. This hypothesis was advanced by
the two famous "Charles" in ecology, Darwin and Elton.
In the past five years a flurry of data and publications has
addressed the hypothesis using various methods (see above).
Our study took the last approach, comparing attack rates on
local co-occurring species that were paired taxonomically.
We compared 15 pairs, each with one native and one exotic
congener -- this phylogenetically controlled approach
addresses differences in local species based on continental
origin, while controlling for other differences. In
addition, our broad survey (30 species) allowed for
generality. Data published in
Agrawal and Kotanen 2003,
Agrawal et al. 2005 |
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