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The role of biotic interactions in plant invasions
Štajerová, Kateřina ; Pyšek, Petr (advisor) ; Prach, Karel (referee) ; Richardson, David M. (referee)
- ABSTRACT - The loss of co-adapted and gain of novel biotic interactions during the invasion process influence the success or failure of introduced plants. Within the present thesis, I studied diverse biotic interactions, specifically the relationships between plants and their herbivores, pollinators, fungi, and resident plant communities, and how biotic interactions can be utilized in planning effective science-based management. With my collaborators, we combined the community and biogeographical approach with the reciprocal transcontinental comparison between Eurasia and North America, based on primary data collected in the field. Of numerous hypotheses for the striking success of invasive plants, the enemy release hypothesis (ERH) is one of the most frequently tested. It asserts that the greater performance of introduced plants in non-native ranges is due to the absence, or decrease, in regulation by natural enemies that are left behind in the native range. Our results, in a broad sense, supported ERH, but we found that the magnitude of herbivore damage is context-dependent, related to the feeding guild and origin of both herbivores and plant species and that the increased plant performance in a new range might also be related to other factors, such as the shift in plant competition. Of animal-plant...
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