Biological invasions are widely acknowledged as a major threat to global biodiversity. Species from all major taxonomic groups have become invasive. The range of impacts of invasive taxa and the overall magnitude of the threat is increasing. Plants comprise the biggest and best-studied group of invasive species. There is a growing debate; however, regarding the nature of the alien plant threat-...

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A major problem in evaluating biological invasions is the lack of information on failed non-native species introductions, with invasiveness determined purely on establishment successes. This is the case of topmouth gudgeon Pseudorasbora parva, an Asiatic cyprinid fish that now occurs throughout most of Europe and is said to be highly invasive. Although the species has established itself in many...

Population structure and genetic diversity of invasions are the result of evolutionary processes such as natural selection, drift and founding events. Some invasions are also molded by specific human activities such as selection for cultivars and intentional introduction of desired phenotypes, which can lead to low genetic diversity in the resulting invasion. We investigated the population stru...

Both ecological and evolutionary processes can influence community assembly and stability, and native community members may respond both ecologically and evolutionarily as additional species enter established communities. Biological invasions provide a unique opportunity to examine these responses of native community members to novel species additions. Here, I use reciprocal transplant experime...

Predicting invasion potential has global signifi cance for managing ecosystems as well as important theoretical implications for understanding community assembly. Phylogenetic relationships of introduced species to the extant community may be predictive of establishment success because of the opposing forces of competition/shared enemies (which should limit invasions by close relatives) versus ...

We postulate that the causes of the problem of invasive alien species are primarily economic and, as such, require economic solutions. Invasive alien species are of increasing concern for four reasons. First, introductions are increasing sharply, while mechanisms for excluding or eradicating alien species have been either withdrawn or progressively weakened. Both trends are due to the liberaliz...

Biological invasions can have strong ecological effects on native communities by altering ecosystem functions, species interactions, and community composition. Even though these ecological effects frequently impact the population dynamics and fitness of native species, the evolutionary consequences of biological invasions have received relatively little attention. Here, I show that invasions im...

A widely cited hypothesis in ecology is that species-rich communities are less vulnerable to invasion than species-poor ones, owing to competition for limiting resources (the “biotic resistance” model). However, evidence for biotic resistance in aquatic ecosystems is equivocal. Contrary to the view that communities become more resistant to invasion as they accumulate species, the rate of invasi...