Slugs and garlic mustard: Dornbush, Hahn publish in Biological Invasions

Philip Hahn, a 2010 graduate of the Environmental Science and Policy Graduate program, received this institution’s a Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award for a project involving slugs and garlic mustard, in collaboration with Associate Professor of Natural and Applied Sciences Mathew Dornbush. Their research is newly published in the international journal Biological Invasions. The article, “Exotic consumers interact with exotic plants to mediate native plant survival in a Midwestern forest herb layer,” reports on how exotic slug herbivory interacts with plant palatability and competition among plants to shift forest understory composition toward dominance by the exotic herb garlic mustard. Their results have important implications for designing effective management programs aimed at restoring native plant diversity and reducing exotic abundance in Wisconsin forests. The full article is available online.