Plants and herbivores have co-evolved in their natural habitats for about 350 million years, but since the domestication of crops, plant resistance against insects has taken a different turn. With the onset of monoculture-driven modern agriculture, selective pressure on insects to overcome resistances has dramatically increased. Therefore plant breeders have resorted to high-tech tools to conti...

There is often an inverse relationship between the diversity of a plant community and the invasibility of that community by non-native plants. Native herbivores that colonize novel plants may contribute to diversity-invasibility relationships by limiting the relative success of non-native plants. Here, we show that, in large collections of non-native oak trees at sites across the USA, non-nativ...

Plants usually emit large amount and varieties of volatiles after being damaged by herbivores. However, analytical methods for measuring herbivore-induced volatiles do not normally monitor the whole range of volatiles and the response to large herbivores such as large mammals is much less studied than the response to other herbivores such as insects. In this paper we present the results of usin...

The rapid expansion of human populations in East Africa increases human-wildlife interactions, particularly along borders protected areas (PAs). This development calls for a better understanding how human-modified landscapes facilitate or exclude wildlife savannas and whether these effects change through time. Here, we used camera traps to compare the distribution 13 large herbivore species Ser...

Invertebrate herbivores are ubiquitous in most terrestrial ecosystems, and theory predicts that their impact on plant community biomass should depend on diversity and productivity of the associated plant communities. To elucidate general patterns in the relationship between invertebrate herbivory, plant diversity, and productivity, we carried out a long-term herbivore exclusion experiment at mu...

Trees critically affect the functioning of savanna ecosystems through their effects on nutrient cycling, water availability, and patterns of space use by wildlife. Therefore, whatever factors influence successful recruitment of tree seedlings are important filters controlling savanna ecosystem function. In African savannas, large mammals have been considered the most important agents of mortali...

Understanding dietary specialization in herbivores has theoretical and practical implications in ecology, yet defining niche breadth consistently has been problematic. To increase clarity and communication among ecologists and among disciplines (i.e., chemists, pharmacologists), we propose a specialization key for mammalian herbivores that assigns "obligatory" and "facultative" modifiers to the...

The spatial heterogeneity hypothesis has been invoked to explain the increase in species diversity from the poles to the tropics: the tropics may be more diverse because they contain more habitats and micro-habitats. In this paper, the spatial heterogeneity hypothesis prediction was tested by evaluating the variation in richness of two guilds of insect herbivores (gall-formers and free-feeders)...

Moderate rates of herbivory can enhance primary production. This hypothesis has led to a controversy as to whether such positive effects can result in mutualistic interactions between plants and herbivores. We present a model for the ecology and evolution of plant-herbivore systems to address this question. In this model, herbivores have a positive indirect effect on plants through recycling of...

The story of Adam and Eve links eating a forbidden fruit with death in the cycle of human existence (Genesis 3:1– 24). Indeed, to avoid poisoning, herbivores and omnivores such as humans must be cautious in choosing which plants and plant parts to eat. A prevailing hypothesis is that the nearly ubiquitous antiherbivore metabolites in plants were selected by coevolution with herbivores. Likewise...