After the introduction: predicting novel plant-herbivore interaction

Introduced plants are found in almost every ecosystem throughout the world as crops, weeds, ornamentals, and invasives. These introduced plants are fed on by some native herbivorous insects but not others, and it may be useful to predict which novel herbivore-plant interactions will arise once a plant is introduced. I find that in ~80 species of introduced oaks, similarity to a local oak species based on plant traits or shared evolutionary history predicts total herbivore damage to the non-native oak species. Moreover, leaf defensive traits deter generalist herbivores regardless of the similarity of those leaves to a local native. I use this information to construct a framework for predicting what herbivores will successfully colonize non-native plants.