Daniel Simberloff

• Florida State University

The new series launched in this issue of Biological Invasions aims to collect papers that provide information on complete alien floras or faunas of large regions; they can be complete checklists of all alien biota including casual, non-established taxa, or checklists of all naturalized (established) or invasive species occurring in a given region....

Coal mining is a major cause of land-use change in the US, and according to the Energy Information Administration it is expected to remain a key part of the national electricity portfolio until at least 2040. It is therefore crucial to understand the environmental impact of coal mining. Although a scientific consensus has emerged that coal mining n...

Using horizon scanning techniques, we identified 14 emerging issues, not yet widely recognized or understood, that are likely to affect how biological invasions are studied and managed on a global scale [1]. Zenni et al. [2] do not comment on the major issues identified in our study. Instead, they draw attention to the nationalities of our authorsh...

We identified emerging scientific, technological, and sociopolitical issues likely to affect how biological invasions are studied and managed over the next two decades. Issues were ranked according to their probability of emergence, pervasiveness, potential impact, and novelty. Top-ranked issues include the application of genomic modification tools...

Assisted migration (AM), an ecosystem engineering technology, is receiving increasing attention and significant support as a means to save biodiversity in a changing climate. Few substantive, or not obviously deficient, reasons have been offered for why pursuing this conservation goal via these means might be good. Some proponents of AM, including...

All tools used for invasive species management in ecological restoration projects have potential risks, but all risks are context dependent and the relative risks of different actions must be assessed against each other for each particular case. The do-nothing option may be appropriate when damage from the invader is light or the invasion's effects...

This introductory chapter presents an organization of the book, which argues that, for pests of wild-lands, biological control should be one of the tools considered for use. Carrying out a biological control program typically requires a commitment to travel to the invader's native range and determine what natural enemies affect the invader's popula...

For a biological control project to be justified for use in wildlands, it must first be established that the target should be managed. For wildlands, this would generally entail demonstrating that the target species is harming native species or impairing ecosystem function. A basic principle guiding biological control projects should be free and op...

Responding to our critique of the novel ecosystem concept [1], Hobbs et al. [2] misrepresent our points of view, so we begin by clarifying our position. First, we do not deny the existence of anthropogenically transformed ecosystems; cities, pastures, agricultural fields, or open-pit mines are real and have accompanied humans for millennia. We agre...

The 'novel ecosystem' concept has captured the attention of scientists, managers, and science journalists, and more recently of policymakers, before it has been subjected to the scrutiny and empirical validation inherent to science. Lack of rigorous scrutiny can lead to undesirable outcomes in ecosystem management, environmental law, and policy. Co...

The Everglades ecosystem is vast, stretching more than 200 miles from Orlando to Florida Bay, and Everglades National Park is but a part located at the southern end. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the historical Everglades has been reduced to half of its original size, and what remains is not the pristine ecosystem many image it to be, but one...

To address the idea that the process of interspecific competition can be inferred from data on geographical distribution alone and that evidence from geographical distribution implies an important role for interspecific competition in shaping ecological communities, we reexamine the occurrence of “true checkerboard” distributions among the land and...

Biological invasions are among the greatest threats to global biodiversity, but in contrast to most other global threats, they suffer from specific communication issues. Our paper presents the first new addition to the widely cited IUCN list of ''100 of the world's worst invasive species'', a list created a decade ago in response to these communica...

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Introduced species are numerous and have increased with globalization. All regions undergo invasions, but islands have suffered disproportionately. The greatest impact is habitat modification: vegetation grazed by introduced animals or overgrown by introduced plants, and changed fire, hydrological, and nutrient regimes. Invaders outcompete, eat, an...

The argument that the threat posed by introduced species is overblown is often buttressed by the observation that native species sometimes also become invasive. An examination of the literature on plant invasions in the United States shows that six times more nonnative species have been termed invasive than native species, and that a member of the...

Non-native species are implicated in many ecological and economic problems, and the field of invasion biology has burgeoned in response to this fact. However, classification, terminology, and management of non-native species generate controversies and even calls for abolition of the field. The fact that the basis for disputes is differing worldview...

Supplementary information to: Non-natives: 141 scientists object Full list of co-signatories to a Correspondence published in Nature 475, 36 (2011); doi: 10.1038/475036a. Daniel Simberloff University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. dsimberloff@utk.edu Jake Alexander Institute of Integrative Biology, Zurich, Switzerland. Fred Allendorf Univ...

1. Biological invasions threaten biodiversity, and understanding the factors that influence a community’s susceptibility to invasion informs both management of invasive species and conservation efforts towards promoting biodiversity. 2. In this study, we examined the native–exotic richness relationships (NERR) at two spatial scales and asked what v...

Aim We examine a presence–absence matrix of the avifauna of the Bismarck Archipelago, for which the concept of competitively driven community assembly rules was formulated, to determine whether data support widespread competitive determination of geographical distributions. Location Bismarck Archipelago. Methods We obtained occurrences of 154 land...

Aim The establishment success of exotic species is calculated as the fraction of introduced species that have become established, and invasion success is estimated as the fraction of established species that have spread significantly from their points of introduction. Records on species introductions are highly incomplete, so strong conclusions abo...

Models and observational studies have sought patterns of predictability for invasion of natural areas by nonindigenous species, but with limited success. In a field experiment using forest understory plants, we jointly manipulated three hypothesized determinants of biological invasion outcome: resident diversity, physical disturbance and abiotic co...

Patterns of size variation in insular mammals have been used to support the claim that mammals have a single optimal body size. This hypothesis enjoys wide support, despite having been questioned on both theoretical and empirical grounds. It is claimed that species of optimal size maintain the highest population densities. Therefore these species a...

Fox's assembly rule, that relative dearth of certain functional groups in a community will facilitate invasion of that particular functional group, serves as the basis for investigation into the functional group effects of invasion resistance. We explored resistance to plant invaders by eliminating or decreasing the number of understory plant speci...

Insights into the ecology of historic invasions by introduced species can be gained by studying long‐term patterns of invasions by native species. In this paper, we review literature in palaeo‐ecology, forest‐stand simulation modelling, and historical studies of plant species invasions to illustrate the relevance of biological inertia in plant comm...

We studied morphological relationships within three guilds of gerbillid rodents in Israel. We found a nonrandom pattern of overdispersed means (community‐wide character displacement) for upper incisor widths among the species in these three guilds. Upper tooth‐row lengths, condylo‐basal skull lengths, and tooth‐row surfaces displayed similar patter...

Of established nonindigenous plant species in California, Florida, and Tennessee, 5.8%, 9.7%, and 13.4%, respectively, invade natural areas according to designations tabulated by state Exotic Pest Plant Councils. Only Florida accords strictly with the tens rule, though California and Tennessee fall within the range loosely viewed as obeying the rul...

Of established nonindigenous plant species in California, Florida, and Tennessee, 5.8%, 9.7%, and 13.4%, respectively, invade natural areas according to designations tabulated by state Exotic Pest Plant Councils. Only Florida accords strictly with the tens rule, though California and Tennessee fall within the range loosely viewed as obeying the rul...

The “rule” that individuals of nonindigenous plant species are larger where they are introduced than where they are native is not borne out in detailed comparisons of European species introduced to California or the Carolinas and species from California and the Carolinas introduced to Europe. On average, individuals of California species are taller...

Biotic invaders are species that establish a new range in which they proliferate, spread, and persist to the detriment of the environment. They are the most important ecological outcomes from the unprecedented alterations in the distribution of the earth’s biota brought about largely through human transport and commerce. In a world without borders,...

Stilbosis quadricustatella leafminers,are microlepidopteran specialists of sand-live oak,(Quercus geminata). These tiny moths,produce,one generation,per year and have,a parasitic life-cycle and long larval stage that develops,entirely within a single oak leaf. Differences in host-plant age, phenotype, and phenology generate a coarse-grained, spatia...

In 1989, the cactus moth, Cactoblastis cactorum, which had been taken from South America and released around the world to control pestiferous Opuntia cacti on which it feeds, appeared in the Florida Keys. How it got there is uncertain. The moth was introduced into the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1957 and then moved by local authorities to other is...

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 inte...

The potential harmful effects of non-indigenous species introduced for biological control remain an important unanswered question, which we addressed by undertaking a literature review. There are few documented instances of damage to non-target organisms or the environment from non-indigenous species released for biological pest control, relative t...

Numerous biological control introductions have adversely affected non-target native species. Although many of these problems occurred in the early days of biological control, some are recent. Because of how little monitoring is done on species, communities, and ecosystems that might be affected by biological control agents, it is quite possible tha...

The deme-formation hypothesis states that selection can produce adaptive genetic variation within and among phytophagous insect populations. We conducted three field experiments and tested this prediction by transferring eggs and measuring performance of a mobile leafmining insect, Stilbosis quadricustatella. In Experiment 1, we compared the rate o...

The deme-formation hypothesis states that selection can produce adaptive genetic variation within and among phytophagous insect populations. We conducted three field experiments and tested this prediction by transferring eggs and measuring performance of a mobile leafmining insect, Stilbosis quadricustatella. In Experiment 1, we compared the rate o...

Individual trees in a North Florida population of Quercus geminata, (sand live oak) vary widely in rates of herbivory by a leaf-mining moth (Stilbosis quadricustatella). Some oaks are always heavily infested while neighboring trees remain lightly attacked. We conducted field experiments in 1991 and 1992 to determine if leafminer performance on heav...

At Sand Lake, Leon County, Florida, mines of Stilbosis quadricustatella, a leaf-mining moth, occur on sand live oak trees (Quercus geminata) over a broad range of densities. Some trees have fewer than 2% of their leaves mined (lightly infested), others up to 70% (heavily infested). Similar levels of infestation are maintained on the same trees year...

Because field experiments are difficult to perform, ecologists often rely on evidence that is nonexperimental and that therefore needs to be rigorously evaluated. Discusses this problem in a number of sub-sections: evidence for competition; the importance of competition; scientific method in ecology; null models in ecology; models and null models....

Wright and Biehl (1982: see 82L/7491) provide equations for R-mode analysis of island similarities under one extreme hypothesis (the competitive guild model) which are argued here to be incorrect. -P.J.Jarvis

The roles of overwintering reproductive recruitment and intertree immigration are examined for leaf-mining insects on oak trees. Full-exclusion caged trees that exclude immigrants, litter exclusion caged trees that exclude overwintering recruits, and control trees were sampled to determine leafminer abundance and species richness. Full-caged trees...

We monitored abundances and occurrences of leaf-mining insects on three oak species, Quercus falcata, Q. nigra, and Q. hemisphaerica, that vary in leaf persistence times. When densities and species richness are compared among oak species, we found no significant differences as predicted by Rhoades and Cates' and Opler's hypotheses regarding leaf mi...

We reconsider several studies of species arrangements over a set of islands or quadrats; for all but one, absence of certain species combinations was taken to indicate competitive exclusions. In every instance mathematical error or lack of a properly framed null hypothesis casts these claims into doubt. An alternative hypothesis, that species colon...

We experimentally isolated oak host trees by transplanting them into an agricultural field to test for spatial and temporal differences in a suite of mortality factors and in larval survivorship of a guild of leaf-mining insects. While other mortality factors for leaf miners were unaffected by isolation, parasitism by hymenopteran insects decreased...

We experimentally induced increased field densities of a leaf-mining insect, Cameraria sp. nov. (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae), but caging a Quercus nigra (Fagaceae) tree to compare insect mortality and survivorship with that on a control tree. Although densities of the leaf miner were significantly higher on the caged tree, larval survivorship did n...

For one large community that I know well, I will discuss those aspects of the component species’ life history or other ecological characteristics that determine whether they are good island colonists. Three broad questions will serve to focus the discussion: (1) What traits and forces allow good colonists to be good colonists? (2) Do any taxonomic...

Evidence from leaf‐mining insects on Fagaceous hosts suggests that range expansions of insects onto introduced trees often involve species that feed on native hosts closely related to the introduced host. An examination of the herbivorous entomofauna of British trees illustrates that the size of the entomofauna is partially determined by the taxono...

Classical nearest neighbor analysis, assuming points, underestimates expected mean nearest neighbor distance for circles and overestimates its standard error. The extent of distortion may be sufficient to lead to incorrect conclusions, such as regularity for an arrangement which is, in fact, clumped. Analytic expressions are derived which are accur...

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 inte...

Natural area managers are currently confronted with a bewildering array of potential sources of information on invading non-indigenous species. At the same time, they often lack sufficiently comprehensive tools to assess current and likely impacts of these invaders in order to prioritize control activities. Existing tools to help evaluate impacts a...

Parasites are a masterful work of evolutionary art. The tiny mite Histiostoma laboratorium, a parasite of Drosophila, launches itself, in an incredible display of evolutionary engineering, like a surface-to-air missile at a fruit fly far above its head. Gravid mussels such as Lampsilis ventricosa undulate excitedly as they release their parasitic l...