Novel Weapons Testing: Are Invasive Plants More Chemically Defended than Native Plants?
Figure 3
Native and exotic plant species occupy similar leaf trait space.
Principal components biplot of native (open circles) and exotic (filled circles) species and their measured traits. PCA axis 1 (carbon-growth) explains 29% of trait variation across 19 exotic and 21 native species; PCA axis 2 (defense-nutrition) explains 19% of the remaining variation. All trait vectors are significantly associated with species PCA position according to randomization tests. Units for traits are given in Table 1.