Sinopsis
In any venture, it is a good idea to pause periodically and reflect on what one is doing and where one is heading. As it turns out, this might be a particularly opportune time to reflect on what we have been doing in invasion biology. This book might have been titled, Invasion biology fifty years later. It was completed in 2008, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 1958 publication of Elton’s well-known book, The ecology of invasions by animals and plants. Coincidentally, 2008 also marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the creation of the SCOPE (Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, a committee formed by the International Council of Scientific Unions) scientific advisory committee, which was charged with the responsibility of focusing scientific attention on invasive species. In addition, more than a decade has passed since the 1996 publication of Williamson’s book, Biological invasions. As good as Williamson’s book was, it has become dated in the wake of the immense amount of research conducted since its publication, much of which was inspired and guided by Williamson’s book. With the exception of climate change, biological invasions probably have received more attention in recent years, both from ecologists and the public-at-large, than any other ecological topic. In the past ten years, the number of papers, books, workshops, and symposia addressing biological invasions extends into the thousands.
There have been several outstanding edited volumes on the topic of invasion biology published in recent years (e.g. Ruiz and Carlton 2003a, Inderjit 2005, Mooney et al. 2005, Sax et al. 2005a, Cadotte et al. 2006, Gherardi 2007, Nentwig 2007). In addition, Lockwood et al. (2007) wrote an excellent introductory textbook, Invasion ecology, that primarily targeted new students, and Cox (2004) provided a detailed review of biological invasions from a focused evolutionary perspective in his book, Alien species and evolution. There have also been many recent thoughtful review papers on aspects of invasion biology (a small sampling includes Duncan et al. 2003, Dietz and Steinlein 2004, Carlton and Ruiz 2005, Alpert 2006, Henderson et al. 2006, Richardson and Pyšek 2006, Sax et al. 2007, Theoharides and Dukes 2007). However, there has been no single-authored text, written to provide a consistent and unifying perspective to
the field, since Williamson’s book. I hope this book can at least partially fill this role.
The reader may have noticed that the title of this book consists of the same two words used by Williamson in his 1996 volume. However, I have reversed their order. The change was intentional and done to emphasize that a primary subject of this book is the discipline of invasion biology itself. My intent was not to present an exhaustive report on the spread and impact of invasive species. Countless books, articles, and reports have provided such details, with new ones coming out all the time. While I have tried to review much of the current research and discussions regarding invasions, neither was my goal to provide a comprehensive accounting of all invasion literature.
This would have resulted in a tome, and I wanted to produce something more focused and readable. Moreover, given the large number of articles being published in the field every year, this book would rapidly become outdated if its primary function was to serve as a bibliographic repository.
Content
- The invasion process
- Dispersal
- Establishment
- Persistence and spread
- Evolution
- Understanding and predicting invasions: an Integrated Approach
- Impacts and management
- Impacts of invasions
- Management of invasive species
- Reflections
- Framing biological invasions
- Researching invasion biology
- Disciplinary challenges
- Conclusion
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