Supplementary material for 'An exotic and invasive tree creates host switch opportunities for a native mistletoe'

Abstract:<br>Invasive plants often disrupt communities due to high investments in growth and reproduction caused by enemy release (enemy release hypothesis) and mutualistic interactions established in invaded ranges. However, parasitic plants such as mistletoes are capable of infecting and decreasing the performance of several host plants, depending on the seed deposition provided by birds and the compatibility between mistletoe and plant hosts. We investigated the performance of the native mistletoe <i>Phoradendron quadrangulare</i> (Santalaceae) infecting native and invasive host plants in southeastern Brazil. We mimicked bird seed dispersal and attached mistletoe seeds to twigs of five native hosts (genera <i>Handroanthus, Moquiniastrum</i>, <i>Pera</i>, <i>Schinus</i>, <i>Tapirira</i>) and five exotic and highly invasive plants (<i>Leucaena</i>, <i>Melia</i>, <i>Pinus</i>, <i>Psidium</i>, and <i>Ricinus</i>). Although mistletoe’s seeds germinated on all hosts, germination and three-year seedling survival were much higher in the invasive <i>Melia</i>, where mistletoes also reached larger size and began reproducing first. Although some exotic plants escape establishment of parasitic plants, the invasive <i>Melia</i> improves the performance of the native mistletoe. Given the large impact mistletoes have on community structure and ecological processes, this host switch may amplify the impact of the invasive plant on the invaded community in much larger and unappreciated ways.<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here we show a list of the files uploaded and their contents:<b>Eletronic Supplementary Materia</b><b>l</b><b>:</b> Supplementary material for 'An exotic and invasive tree creates host switch opportunities for a native mistletoe', including supplementary<b> F</b><b>igures S1</b> and <b>S2</b>, and <b>T</b><b>able S1</b>.<b>Read.me:</b> file with data description and file structure.<b>germination_mistletoes:</b> Script containing the code used to analyse germination data<b>germination_data.txt:</b> Table containing the raw data used in germination data analysis<b>survival_mistletoes</b><b>:</b> Script containing the code used to analyse survival data, including bark investment.<b>survival_mistletoes_data.txt:</b> Table containing the raw data used in the survival data analysis<b>bark_regression_WR:</b> Table containing raw data used in the survival and bark investment analysis.<br>