Exchange-degenerate Regge trajectories: a fresh look from resonance and forward scattering regions

The exchange-degeneracy of the mesonic $f-, \omega -, \rho -$ and $a_{2}-$ Regge trajectories dominant at moderate and high energies in hadron elastic scattering is analyzed from two viewpoints. The first concerns the masses of the resonances lying on these trajectories; the second deals with the total cross-sections of hadron and photon induced reactions. Neither set of data supports exact exchange-degeneracy.