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Evolutionary Interactions In Invasive Species: The Importance Of Plant-Soil Feedbacks To Local Adaptation And Rapid Evolution, Emmi Felker-Quinn
Evolutionary Interactions In Invasive Species: The Importance Of Plant-Soil Feedbacks To Local Adaptation And Rapid Evolution, Emmi Felker-Quinn
Doctoral Dissertations
Interactions between intraspecific plant variation and the environment can create evolutionary and ecosystem feedbacks, but the contribution of these feedbacks to the success of invasive plant species has rarely been explored or quantified. To test whether evolution occurs during the process of plant invasion I conducted three major experiments and a meta-analysis to test various aspects of this central question. First, I conducted a meta-analysis of studies that tested the Evolution of Increased Competitive Ability (EICA) hypothesis. The meta-analysis did not support EICA’s prediction that release from herbivores leads to reduced defenses and higher performance, but it showed that evolutionary …