Do seeds from invasive bromes experience less granivory than seeds from native congeners in the Great Basin Desert? Jacob E. Lucero Received: 15 February 2018 / Accepted: 7 July 2018 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2018 Abstract In part, the enemy release hypothesis of plant invasion posits that generalist herbivores in the non-native ranges of invasive plants will prefer native plants to exotic invaders. However, the extent to which this occurs in natural communities is unclear. Here, I examined the foraging preferences of an important guild of generalist herbivores—granivorous rodents— with respect to seeds from a suite of native and invasive Bromus (‘‘brome’’) species at five study sites distributed across & 80,000 km 2 of the Great Basin Desert, USA. By examining only congeners, I accounted for a potentially large source of interspeci- fic variation (phylogenetic relatedness). In general, granivorous rodents removed seeds from native bromes at a 23% higher rate than seeds from invasive bromes, suggesting a preference for native species. This preference was not entirely explained by seed size, and patterns of seed removal were consistent across study sites. These findings suggest that invasive bromes in the Great Basin might experience less rodent granivory than native congeners, which is consistent with a key prediction derived from the enemy release hypothesis. Keywords Bromus  Enemy release hypothesis  Generalist herbivores  Granivory  Great Basin  Rodents Introduction One of the most well-known explanations for the success of introduced plants in their non-native ranges is enemy release (Elton 1958; Keane and Crawley 2002). In part, this hypothesis predicts that generalist and specialist herbivores in recipient communities will selectively consume native species over exotic, inva- sive species, resulting in relative freedom from herbivory for invaders (Fig. 1 in Keane and Crawley 2002). However, with respect to generalist herbivores, this prediction is not necessarily intuitive. Generalists are equipped to attack a variety of host species and are found in both the native and non-native ranges of exotic species. Thus, both native and translocated plants in any community could be attacked by generalists. In this context, there may be ‘‘no obvious reason’’ (Keane and Crawley 2002) why exotic plants Communicated by Lauchlan Fraser. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-018-0858-7) con- tains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J. E. Lucero (&) Division of Biological Sciences and the Institute on Ecosystems, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA e-mail: jacob.lucero@umontana.edu 123 Plant Ecol https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-018-0858-7