Precise Manipulation Through a Modeling Study

Plant Fitness Assessment for Wild Relatives of Insect Resistant Bt-Crops

“…This distinction may explain a lack of fecundity consequences from herbivory in some other potted plant studies of wild relatives of cole crops, which have shown strong compensation in terms of seed set ( [53,54] for R. raphanistrum and [55] for B. nigra). An average plant cover of ∼90% grasses and forbs already established or building in the first months after germination of our test plants contrasted starkly with less crowded growing conditions in a majority of previous studies testing for tolerance to herbivory in pots (e.g., [20,[56][57][58][59]) or weeded field sites (e.g., [60,61]). These studies, and the small scale field study of Strauss et al [62] on wild radish are not inconsistent with our fitness results if plants in these protected conditions rarely suffered mortality or if seed output was calculated only from plants that lived to reproduce (rather than including zero seed production for plants that died as juveniles).…”