The successful invasion of exotic plants is often attributed to the absence of coevolved enemies in the introduced range (i.e., the enemy release hypothesis). Nevertheless, several components of this hypothesis, including the role of generalist herbivores, remain relatively unexplored. We used repeated censuses of exclosures and paired controls to investigate the role of a generalist herbivore,...

Disease-mediated threats posed by exotic species to native counterparts are not limited to introduced parasites alone, since exotic hosts frequently acquire native parasites with possible consequences for infection patterns in native hosts. Several biological and geographical factors are thought to explain both the richness of parasites in native hosts, and the invasion success of free-living e...

Both ecological and evolutionary processes can influence community assembly and stability, and native community members may respond both ecologically and evolutionarily as additional species enter established communities. Biological invasions provide a unique opportunity to examine these responses of native community members to novel species additions. Here, I use reciprocal transplant experime...

This article intends to provide an introduction to the construction of small exotic 4-manifolds. Some of the necessary background is covered. An exposition is given of J. Park’s construction in [P] of an exotic CP#7CP. This article does not intend to present any new results. It was originally a Master’s thesis, and its aim is merely to provide a leisurely introduction to exotic 4-manifolds that...

The magic numbers in exotic nuclei are discussed, and their novel origin is shown to be the spin-isospin dependent part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction in nuclei. The importance and robustness of this mechanism is shown in terms of meson exchange, G-matrix, and QCD theories. In neutron-rich exotic nuclei, magic numbers such as N = 8, 20, etc. can disappear, while N = 6, 16, etc. arise, affec...

In the context of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), we discuss the introduction of exotic matter below the string scale MX in order to achieve gauge unification at MX (a constraint of a large class of string models). The possible types of exotic matter that can realise this are investigated and its effect on the top quark mass mt is presented. The implementation of a theory of f...