Carol Eunmi Lee Dept of Zoology, 430 Lincoln Drive, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA. e-mail: carollee@ facstaff.wisc.edu INVASIVE SPECIES (see Glossary) and populations pose major threats to biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, agriculture, fisheries, and public health. Economic costs associated with the more publicized exotic invaders, such as weeds, agricultural pests, zebra mus...

Invasive species are regarded as a biological pressure to natural aquatic communities. Understanding the factors promoting successful invasions is of great conceptual and practical importance. From a practical point of view, it should help to prevent future invasions and to mitigate the effects of recent invaders through early detection and prioritization of management measures. This study aims...

Watersipora is an invasive genus of bryozoans, easily dispersed by fouled vessels. We examined Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I haplotypes from introduced populations on the US Pacific coastline to investigate geographic segregation of species and/or haplotypes. In California, the W. subtorquata group fell into three major sub-groups: W. subtorquata clades A and B, and W. "new sp.". W. subtorquat...

Invasion ecology is one of the most rapidly developing branches of ecology (Williamson, 1996; Rejmánek & al., in press). Recent developments in this field have brought about the need to standardize terminology (Richardson & al., 2000). The awareness of the importance of biological invasions dates back to De Candolle (1855) and Darwin (1859), but the field was set on firm ground in the middle of...

Interest in biotic invasions has grown as the entry, spread and proliferation of organisms beyond their native ranges is accelerating world-wide. The study of invasions can make use of these natural experiments for better understanding community composition changes, the rate and character of natural selection, genetic drift, and coevolution. Biotic invasions are part of the global change caused...

Biological invasions have the potential to cause extensive ecological and economic damage. Maritime trade facilitates biological invasions by transferring species in ballast water, and on ships' hulls. With volumes of maritime trade increasing globally, efforts to prevent these biological invasions are of significant importance. Both the International Maritime Organization and the Australian go...

A diverse array of molecular markers and constantly evolving analytical approaches have been employed to reconstruct the invasion histories of the most notorious invasions. Detailed information on the source(s) of introduction, invasion route, type of vectors, number of independent introductions and pathways of secondary spread has been corroborated for a large number of biological invasions. I...

Study of interactions between pairs or larger groups of nonindigenous species has been subordinated in the literature to study of interactions between nonindigenous and native species. To the extent that interactions among introduced species are depicted at all, the emphasis has been on negative interactions, primarily resource competition and interference. However, a literature search reveals ...

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org F hundreds of years, humans have been introducing plants, animals, and other organisms around the world, in a relatively slow process of globalizing the Earth’s biota (DiCastri 1989). More recently, the pace of this process has increased with modern trade, travel, and technology, so that biological invasions have become a consequenc...

Kathryn A. Yurkonis and Scott J. Meiners* Department of Biological Sciences, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL 61920 USA *Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Exotic plant invasions are often associated with declines in diversity within invaded communities. However, few studies have examined the local community dynamics underlying these impacts. Changes in species richness ...