—The potential for ecological and economic damage caused by invasive species is only beginning to be appreciated. A recently arrived, and particularly worrisome, invader in North America is the Asian longhorned beetle Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky), the larvae of which damage trees and forests. The geographic extent and likely path of its possible invasion of North American forests, how...

When exotic animal species invade new environments they also bring an often unknown microbial diversity, including pathogens. We describe a novel and widely distributed virus in one of the most globally widespread, abundant and damaging invasive ants (Argentine ants, Linepithema humile). The Linepithema humile virus 1 is a dicistrovirus, a viral family including species known to cause widesprea...

The present geographical distribution of Lymnaea columella, as recorded in the National Freshwater Snail Collection, is described and discussed. It appears that L. columella is the most successful colonist of all the freshwater snail species in South Africa, and, together with Bulinus tropicus and Lymnaea natalensis, it forms the most widely distributed freshwater snail species in the region. D...

Plant species vary greatly in their responsiveness to nutritional soil mutualists, such as mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia, and this responsiveness is associated with a trade-off in allocation to root structures for resource uptake. As a result, the outcome of plant competition can change with the density of mutualists, with microbe-responsive plant species having high competitive ability when m...

Z ebra mussel, kudzu, fire ant, gypsy moth, common carp— whether you are a farmer, outdoors enthusiast, cottage owner, or ecologist, you have undoubtedly witnessed the spread and adverse impacts of invasive species. As long as humans have migrated, we have carried species from their homeland to provide some familiar comforts of home in new lands. This trend was exemplified by the acclimatizatio...

T he nature of biological invasions prompts researchers to focus on questions of great importance: How far will a nonnative species go? How fast? And what are the consequences to native species? To crops? To us? This perspective had crystallized long before Charles Elton wrote his classic treatise on the subject in 1958 (1). In it, Elton noted that scientific accounts of invasion have ‘‘a sense...

One hypothesized invasion strategy (“try-harder”) predicts that invaders exhibit functional traits are better adjusted to the environment than native species. Alternatively, “join-the-locals” hypothesis trait convergence between invasive and species due environmental filtering with increasing resource limitation. We invasions strategies shift from “try-harder” elevation. used an elevational gra...

To understand the biodiversity of an ecosystem cannot be understood by solely analyzing pair relations competing species. Instead, we should consider multi-point interactions because presence a third party could change original microscopic outcome significantly. In this way alliance may emerge where species, who have biased otherwise, can protect each other from external invader. Such formed tw...