Native weeds and exotic plants: relationships to disturbance in mixed grass prairie

The paper compares distributions of native weedy species and exotic species with respect to three kinds of disturbance, roads, trails, and prairie dog towns. Data were collected at the north and south units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and at Wind Cave National Park. The paper concludes that many exotic species differ substantially from native weeds in their exploitation of disturbance. It is thus not useful to manage exotics as if they were just another weed.