Ecology Letters (2005) 8, 209-217

Giles C. Thelen, Jorge M. Vivanco, Beth Newingham, William Good, Harsh P. Bais, Peter Landres, Anthony Caesar and Ragan M. Callaway (2005)
Insect herbivory stimulates allelopathic exudation by an invasive plant and the suppression of natives
Ecology Letters 8 (2), 209-217
Abstract: Exotic invasive plants are often subjected to attack from imported insects as a method of biological control. A fundamental, but rarely explicitly tested, assumption of biological control is that damaged plants are less fit and compete poorly. In contrast, we find that one of the most destructive invasive plants in North America, Centaurea maculosa, exudes far higher amounts of (±)-catechin, an allelopathic chemical known to have deleterious effects on native plants, when attacked by larvae of two different root boring biocontrol insects and a parasitic fungus. We also demonstrate that C. maculosa plants experimentally attacked by one of these biocontrols exhibit more intense negative effects on natives.
(The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.)
Link to article at publishers website
Database assignments for author(s): Anthony J. Caesar, Harsh P. Bais

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
environment - cropping system/rotation
molecular biology - genes

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Centaurea stoebe micranthos (weed)