Invasion and Subsequent Biological Control of St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum): Rapid Evolution of Herbivore Resistance?

0098377约翰·马龙外来生物对本地社区的入侵正在对我们的自然生态系统造成巨大的经济损失。 生物控制程序往往失败，这给环境带来了额外的负担，因为入侵者必须用化学杀虫剂和除草剂来控制。这项研究的基础是美国最成功的杂草生物防治计划之一。 它的重点是圣约翰草（贯叶连翘），一个重要的入侵植物，已成功地控制使用引进的食草动物。 该项目可以帮助我们了解植食性昆虫抗性的进化和抗性的丧失，并可以揭示植物和昆虫生防因子之间的协同进化动力学。 该项目与基本生态学以及保护生物学和农业领域的许多经济应用密切相关。 这些实验可以确定植物是否可以在不存在和存在生物防治剂的情况下迅速失去抗性，然后增加抗性，并且还将证明植物对一种食草动物的抗性是否提供对多种食草动物的抗性。 目前，对这些问题的实证研究很少。

0098377 John MaronThe invasion of native communities by introduced organisms is causing tremendous economic damage to our natural ecosystems. Biological control programs often fail, which places additional burdens on the environment because invasives must then be controlled with chemical pesticides and herbicides. The foundation of this study is one of the most successful weed biological control programs in the US. It is focused on St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum), an important invasive plant that has been successfully controlled using introduced herbivores. The project can help us to understand the evolution of herbivore resistance, and loss of resistance, and can reveal the coevolutionary dynamics between plants and their insect biocontrol agents. The project has strong relevance for basic ecology as well as numerous economic applications in the fields of conservation biology and agriculture. The experiments can determine if plants can rapidly lose, then accrue, resistance in the absence and presence of biocontrol agents, and will also demonstrate if plant resistance to one herbivore provides resistance to multiple herbivores. Currently there are few empirical studies on these questions.