Classical models of biological invasions assess species spread in homogeneous landscapes by assuming constant growth rates and random local movement. Mounting evidence suggests, however, that demographic stochasticity, environmental heterogeneity and non-random movement of individuals affect considerably the spread dynamics. Here, we show that the dynamics of biological invasions are controlled...

Exotic plants often invade areas of high human activity, such as along trails, roads, and forest edges, and in disturbed riparian areas. These same habitat types are also favored by ticks. This convergence suggests that habitat modifications caused by exotic plant invasions may mediate disease vector habitat quality, indirectly affecting human disease risk at the local spatial scale. We tested ...

There is a long history of species being moved around the world by humans. These introduced species can provide substantial benefits, but they can also have undesirable consequences. We explore the importance of human activities on the processes of species dissemination and potential invasions using the grass subfamily Bambusoideae ("bamboos"), a group that contains taxa that are widely utilise...

Invasions of nonnative plants are widely recognized as one the major threats to biodiversity natural ecosystems on a global scale. Pioneer and ruderal habitats primary locations for penetration alien plants. Both pioneer vegetation very close in their genesis beginning development; therefore, comparative analysis components historical trends would contribute clarifying direction successional ch...

Invasions are one of the most easily identified spatial phenomena in ecology, and have inspired a rich variety of theories for ecologists and naturalists consideration. However, a number of arguments over the sensitivities of invasion rates to stochasticity, density-dependence, localization, and discreteness persist in the literature. The standard mathematical approach to invasions is based on ...

The spread of exotic species and climate change are among the most serious global environmental threats. Each independently causes considerable ecological damage, yet few data are available to assess whether changing climate might facilitate invasions by favoring introduced over native species. Here, we compare our long-term record of weekly sessile marine invertebrate recruitment with interann...

Invasions by multiple non-native plant species are common, but management programs often prioritize control of individual that expected to have the highest impacts. Multi-species invasions could larger or smaller impacts than single-species depending on how co-occurring invaders interact alter their abundance per capita Synergistic interactions, such as facilitation, may lead greater combined H...

Biological invasions are facilitated by the global transportation of species and climate change. Given that invasions may cause ecological and economic damage and pose a major threat to biodiversity, understanding the mechanisms behind invasion success is essential. Both the release of non-native populations from natural enemies, such as parasites, and the genetic diversity of these populations...

In the companion paper of this set (Capitán and Cuesta, 2010) we have developed a full analytical treatment of the model of species assembly introduced in Capitán et al. (2009). This model is based on the construction of an assembly graph containing all viable configurations of the community, and the definition of a Markov chain whose transitions are the transformations of communities by new sp...

Island biotas are viewed popularly as much more fragile than those of mainland areas and much more prone to damage from invaders. There are far too few data to assess this view thorougWy; for example, failed invasions are often unrecorded, and claims that an introduced species has displaced a native one are often based on correlated population changes rather than experiment and/or detailed fiel...