Chemical Curation of Lantana camara emissions across Native and Invaded Habitats

This work is an ongoing effort of curating thousands of chemical compounds captured as emissions of headspace volatiles from one of the world's most aggressive plant invasive species, namely Lantana camara. Over the past five decades, several groups have identified the composition profile of BVoCs produced by L.camara under varying conditions and contexts. We have performed first hand chemical profiling of Lantana camara foliar emissions from invasive populations in New Delhi, India, using a combination of steam distillation and Comprehensive GC. The data so obtained have been compared with existing composition profiles of the same species from native and near native habitats available in published records, with as little variation as possible in sample collection and profiling methods. The biggest challenge in this attempt has been to create a platform where multiple profiles of the same species can be curated sufficiently to bring diverse datasets on to a common comparable platform. We have used NIST libraries to re-assess and curate chemicals composition profiles and find a strong signature for differences in both quantity and quality of emissions from native and invaded habitats, providing indirect but strong evidence for the Novel Weapons Hypothesis of Invasive species evolution and success.