Herbivore control of plant community structure and exotic plant invasions

Large vertebrate herbivores often have strong impacts on plant populations and communities, but in many parts of the world human activities have profoundly altered herbivore communities through habitat modification, hunting, removal of top predators, and introductions of non-native species.

My research examines the impacts of these altered plant-herbivore dynamics on plant communities and particularly exotic plant invasions, with the long-term goal of understanding how anthropogenic modifications of biotic interactions ultimately influence the ecological goods and services provided by natural communities.

One particularly exciting finding has been that the replacement of native with exotic herbivores can facilitate exotic plant invasions and ecosystem re-organization (Parker et al. 2006), highlighting the long-term implications of altered plant-herbivore dynamics.