At least 15 species of aphids are now recognised as New Zealand natives and most of these are very likely to be endemic. Most native aphids belong in the subfamily Aphidinae (Aphidini), with a possible single species in Aphidinae-Macrosiphini, at least two in Neophyllaphidinae and one in Taiwanaphidinae. With one exception, native aphids are restricted to a single host plant genus, and these ho...

11 Climate Impacts Research Centre (CIRC), Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, SE-981 07 Abisko, Sweden 12 Research Institute for Nature and Forest INBO, Department of Biodiversity and Natural Environment, 1070 Brussels, Belgium Corresponding author: Jonas J. Lembrechts, Centre of Excellence of Plant and Vegetation Ecology, University of Antwerp, 2610 Wilrijk, Belg...

Plant traits associated with alien invasiveness may also distinguish rare from common native species. To test this, we grew 23 native (9 common, 14 rare) and 18 alien (8 common, 10 rare) herbaceous species in Switzerland from six plant families under nutrient-addition and competition treatments. Alien and common species achieved greater biomass than native and rare species did overall respectiv...

It is often assumed that exotic plants can become invasive when they possess novel secondary chemistry compared with native plants in the introduced range. Using untargeted metabolomic fingerprinting, we compared a broad range of metabolites of six successful exotic plant species and their native congeners of the family Asteraceae. Our results showed that plant chemistry is highly species-speci...

Although exotic plants comprise a substantial portion of floristic biodiversity, their contributions to community and ecosystem processes are not well understood. We manipulated plant species richness in old-field communities to compare the impacts of native vs. exotic species on plant biomass, seed production, and arthropod community structure. Plants within diverse communities, regardless of ...

The patterns of species distributions determine the functioning of ecosystems across a wide range of temporal and spatial scales, from biogeochemical cycles and partitioning of the energy budget, to changes in biodiversity, habitat characteristics, and trophic structures. To predict functionality, it is important to know the composition of species and other habitat characteristics. Loss of nati...

Macroinvertebrate communities in a central Kansas grassland were examined to assess their responses to differences in landmanagement and explore their viability for biological assessment of grasslands. Canopy (drop-trap) and ground-dwelling (pitfall traps) communities were quantitatively sampled fromJuneÐSeptember 1998 and1999.The responsesof thewhole arthropodcommunity and two focal groups, Co...

Decreased plant diversity is expected to reduce ecosystem function. Although many studies have examined eff ects of plant species on trophic interactions, information regarding eff ects of native or non-native plant diversity on performance of individuals of higher trophic levels is limited. We reared larval American toad Anaxyrus americanus tadpoles in outdoor mesocosms containing litter of 1,...

Basic information on where nonnative plant species have successfully invaded is lacking. We assessed the vulnerability of 22 vegetation types (25 sets of four plots in nine study areas) to nonnative plant invasions in the north-central United States. In general, habitats with high native species richness were more heavily invaded than species-poor habitats, low-elevation areas were more invaded...