The dataset for a systematic review of the attractant-decoy and repellent- plant hypotheses: do plants with heterospecific neighbours escape herbivory?

Aims

This systematic review highlights the relative support and implica- tions of the attractant-decoy and repellent-plant hypotheses, discuss- ing important linkages between these theories and the opportunity for novel integration into ecological and applied research.

Methods

An extensive systematic review of the current literature on the attract- ant-decoy and repellent-plant hypotheses was done to describe the following attributes of the research to date: (i) the geographic extent (country and biome) of studies on this topic, (ii) the scope of experi- mental designs used, (iii) the level of support for these hypotheses with respect to the breadth of ecological niches tested, (iv) the level of support for these hypotheses with respect to the classes of herbi- vores examined and, lastly, (v) the ecological impact or purpose of these studies. Herein, we summarize important research gaps in the empirical literature on this topic and identify novel opportunities for critical linkages between ecological and applied theories.