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Theory and early empirical work posed that herbivore pressure should be lower on islands than on the mainland owing to lower herbivore abundance and diversity in insular systems. Consequently, plant taxa found on islands are expected to be less protected or even to have lost their defences completely. While early observational studies supported the prediction of lower herbivory and plant defences on islands, recent island-mainland comparisons have yielded mixed results, with some studies finding no differences between islands and mainlands or, surprisingly, higher herbivory and plant defences on islands. In this book, the authors aim to re-assess current theory and initiate a new generation of work on insularity effects on plant-herbivore interactions. This book aims to fill the research gaps by integrating the research that has been done to date and by compiling and summarising new research on insularity effects on plant-herbivore interactions. It provides a critical examinationof the patterns in light of classical theory and identifies potential mechanisms or underlying processes. It also aims to raise new questions that will form the basis for a revised and more robust research programme.
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¿Xoaquín Moreira is interested in the ecological and evolutionary processes that occur among different trophic levels (plants, herbivores and natural enemies), and predict how the future global change might influence various species interactions.
Luis Abdala-Roberts is an ecologist broadly interested in plant-animal interactions, focusing mainly on the effects of variation within (genetic diversity) and among species (e.g. functional diversity) on interactions, and how such effects feedback to shape ecological (trophic control, community stability) and evolutionary (e.g. selection on species traits) processes.
