The results of herbivore preference followed our hypothesis. Control low fertilized plants were significantly preferred over damage low fertilized plants, and preferred (not significantly, P 0.0844 > 0.05) control high fertilized plants over damage high fertilized plants. Although the result is not 0.05, it is close to significant. If the experiment was replicated, we may be able to determine a significant difference between high fertilized damage and control plants on herbivore preference. Preference between fertilizer groups was not tested for, but damage high fertilized plant leaves had a greater amount of leaf area consumed (0.7668286) over damage low fertilized plants (0.53268571). These results are what was hypothesized, as well fertilized plants have been shown to have less volatile organic compounds found in the leaves and therefore would be preferable to herbivores (Prudic et al. 2005). Our results show that our treatment of mechanical damage and jasmonic acid could be used to deter herbivores in plants receiving a similar amount of fertilizer as our low treatment group, but it is not known how the plants would be affected further in terms of fruit produced and plant success because we did not test for that.
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