Journal article
Quantifying levels of biological invasion: Towards the objective classification of invaded and invasible ecosystems
JA Catford, PA Vesk, DM Richardson, P Pyšek
Global Change Biology | Published : 2012
Open access
Abstract
Biological invasions are a global phenomenon that threatens biodiversity, and few, if any, ecosystems are free from alien species. The outcome of human-mediated introductions is affected by the invasiveness of species and invasibility of ecosystems, but research has primarily focused on defining, characterizing and identifying invasive species; ecosystem invasibility has received much less attention. A prerequisite for characterizing invasibility is the ability to compare levels of invasion across ecosystems. In this paper, we aim to identify the best way to quantify the level of invasion by nonnative animals and plants by reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of different metrics. We e..
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Awarded by Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Awarded by Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic
Awarded by Czech Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
We greatly appreciate the helpful comments provided by Joslin Moore on an earlier version of this manuscript. Thanks also to Will Morris for help in creating Fig. 2 in R, and Cindy Hauser for thoughts on calculating invasibility. Comments from two anonymous referees helped to improve the manuscript. Data used in Fig. 2 was provided by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment. J. A. C was supported by the Applied Environmental Decision Analysis Commonwealth Environmental Research Facility. D. M. R. acknowledges support from the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology and the Working for Water Programme through their collaborative project on 'Research for Integrated Management of Invasive Alien Species'. P. P. was supported from the institutional long-term research plans no. AV0Z60050516 (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic) and MSM0021620828 (Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic) and by grant no. P505/11/1112 (Czech Science Foundation), and acknowledges support by the Praemium Academiae award from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.