Non-native plant invasions can change communities and ecosystems by altering the structure and composition of native vegetation. Changes in native plant communities caused by non-native plants can influence native wildlife species in diverse ways, but the outcomes and underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we review and synthesize current information for the Intermountain West of th...

How do we balance risks? This paper assesses hypotheses derived from instrumental rationality and risk society theories about the reasoning strategies that people will use to develop views supportive or oppositional to the use of herbicides to manage cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), an invasive weed. Cheatgrass is well-known in the population of the American West to increase wildfire risks substan...

We investigated the frequency of outcrossing in downy brome (Bromus tectorum L.), a cleistogamous weedy annual grass, in both common garden and wild populations, using microsatellite and single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) markers. In the common garden study, 25 lines with strongly contrasting genotypes were planted in close proximity. We fingerprinted 10 seed progeny from 8 individuals of each...

Bromus tectorum L. (cheatgrass or downy brome) is an important exotic weed in natural ecosystems as well as in winter cereal cropland in semiarid western North America. The systemic, seedling-infecting head smut pathogen Ustilago bullata Berk. commonly infects cheatgrass stands, often at epidemic levels. We examined factors controlling U. bullata infection levels in greenhouse studies with pare...