Laura Meyerson

University of Rhode Island | URI · Department of Natural Resources Science

Incorporating physiology into models of population dynamics will improve our understanding of how and why invasions succeed and cause ecological impacts, whereas others fail or remain innocuous. Targeting both organismal physiologists and invasion scientists, we detail how physiological processes affect every invasion stage, for both plants and ani...

Social media can help scientific journals to disseminate and increase the social and scientific reach and impact of their publications. With this goal, the journal Biological Invasions has been active on Facebook and Twitter since 2017. Here, we assess for the first time the performance of Biological Invasions’ Facebook and Twitter accounts. Twitte...

As human communities become increasingly interconnected through transport and trade, there has been a concomitant rise in both accidental and intentional species introductions, resulting in biological invasions. A warming global climate and the rapid movement of people and vessels across the globe have opened new air and sea routes, accelerated pro...

The evolution of increased competitive ability (EICA) hypothesis encapsulates the importance of evolution and ecology for biological invasions. According to this proposition, leaving specialist herbivores at home frees introduced plant species from investing limited resources in defense to instead use those resources for growth, selecting for indiv...

Roseau cane (Phragmites australis (Cav). Trin. ex Steud.) is the dominant plant species of the Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana, USA, and protects the coastline from erosion and storm‐related impacts, maintaining shipping channels and oil infrastructure. Widespread dieback and thinning of P. australis were noted in the Mississippi River Delta i...

Most published papers in ecology come from a handful of countries, and invasion science as an ecological subdiscipline is no exception. Based on the country of corresponding authors, we analyzed patterns in submissions, reviews, and publications in the journal Biological Invasions from its first issue in 1999 to 2020. Regionally, North America, Eur...

The editorial board of this journal, Biological Invasions, aims to publish research that informs understanding of the patterns and processes of invasions and discussion of relevant policy and conservation issues related to controlling invasions. Because the scope of the journal's interests is global, building an editorial board that represents the...

Regeneration from vegetative fragments is common in plants that occur in disturbed and wet habitats but quantitative data comparing regeneration of different plant parts under various environmental conditions are still scarce. Phragmites australis is a dominant and a keystone wetland species that is widespread all around the world. It spreads both...

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super‐organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super‐organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities....

Invasive plants are known to alter the soil microbial communities; however, the effects of co-occurring native and invasive congeners on the soil bacterial diversity and their predictive metabolic profiles are not known. Here, we compared the rhizosphere bacterial communities of invasive Prosopis juliflora and its native congener Prosopis cineraria...

Invasive species have a major effect on many sectors of the U.S. economy and on the well-being of its citizens. Their presence impacts animal and human health, military readiness, urban vegetation and infrastructure, water, energy and transportations systems, and indigenous peoples in the United States (Table 9.1). They alter bio-physical systems a...

Unprecedented rates of introduction and spread of non-native species pose burgeoning challenges to biodiversity, natural resource management, regional economies, and human health. Current biosecurity efforts are failing to keep pace with globalization, revealing critical gaps in our understanding and response to invasions. Here, we identify four pr...

Understanding the likely future impacts of biological invasions is crucial yet highly challenging given the multiple relevant environmental, socio‐economic and societal contexts and drivers. In the absence of quantitative models, methods based on expert knowledge are the best option for assessing future invasion trajectories. Here, we present an ex...

Biological invasions are a global consequence of an increasingly connected world and the rise in human population size. The numbers of invasive alien species – the subset of alien species that spread widely in areas where they are not native, affecting the environment or human livelihoods – are increasing. Synergies with other global changes are ex...

Our ability to predict invasions has been hindered by the seemingly idiosyncratic context-dependency of individual invasions. However, we argue that robust and useful generalisations in invasion science can be made by considering “invasion syndromes” which we define as “a combination of pathways, alien species traits, and characteristics of the rec...

Herbivores play a critical role in plant invasions either by facilitating or inhibiting species establishment and spread. However, relatively few studies with invasive plant species have focused on the role of plant tolerance and how it varies geographically to influence invasion success. We conducted a common garden study using two lineages (nativ...

Plant genome size influences the functional relationships between cellular and whole‐plant physiology, but we know little about its importance to plant tolerance of environmental stressors and how it contributes to range limits and invasion success. We used native and invasive lineages of a wetland plant to provide the first experimental test of th...

Prevailing hypotheses recognize cities as 'super-organisms' which both provides organizing principles for cities and fills the scalar gap in the hierarchical living system between ecosystems and the entire planet. However, most analogies between the traits of organisms and cities are inappropriate making the super-organism model impractical as a me...

Aim Recent research has highlighted that the relationship between species interactions and latitude can differ between native and invasive plant taxa, generating biogeographical heterogeneity in community resistance to plant invasions. In the first study with foliar pathogens, we tested whether co‐occurring native and invasive lineages of common re...

Abstract Among the traits whose relevance for plant invasions has recently been suggested are genome size (the amount of nuclear DNA) and ploidy level. So far, research on the role of genome size in invasiveness has been mostly based on indirect evidence by comparing species with different genome sizes, but how karyological traits influence competi...

Background and aims: Since its emergence in the mid-20th century, invasion biol- ogy has matured into a productive research field addressing questions of fundamen- tal and applied importance. Not only has the number of empirical studies increased through time, but also has the number of competing, overlapping and, in some cases, contradictory hypot...

Classical biocontrol constitutes the importation of natural enemies from a native range to control a non-native pest. This is challenging when the target organism is phylogenetically close to a sympatric non-target form. Recent papers have proposed and recommended that two European moths (Archanara spp.) be introduced to North America to control no...

Differentiation within Phragmites australis, one of the world's most cosmopolitan and globally important wild plants, and invasions by individual lineages outside of their native ranges is attracting the interest of scientists worldwide. We compared the physiological performance of 89 populations representing distinct genotypes from six phylogeogra...

Species in the grass family (Poaceae) have caused some of the most damaging invasions in natural ecosystems, but plants in this family are also among the most widely used by humans. Therefore, it is important to be able to predict their likelihood of naturalisation and impact. We explore whether plant height is of particular importance in determini...

Rising demand for ruminant meat and dairy products in developing countries is expected to double anthropogenic greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions from livestock by 2050. Mitigation strategies are urgently needed to meet demand while minimizing environmental impacts. Here, we develop scenarios for mitigating emissions under local vs global supply...

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....

Dairy production is becoming more industrialized globally, especially in developing countries. The large amount of animal wastes from industrial feedlots cannot be fully used on nearby farmlands, leading to severe environmental problems. Using China as a case study, we found that most dairy feedlots employ a semi-coupled mode that only recycles sol...

Roadside ecosystems are managed areas adjacent to roads that are undervalued for the ecological functions they provide. Reductions in roadside mowing is a passive restoration approach that can create habitat, lower management costs, and reduce fragmentation, but managers fear reducing mowing will allow invasive plants to proliferate. Our goal was t...

Identifying the factors that influence spatial genetic structure among populations can provide insights into the evolution of invasive plants. In this study, we used the common reed (Phragmites australis), a grass native in Europe and invading North America, to examine the relative importance of geographic, environmental (represented by climate her...

The literature suggests that small genomes promote invasion in plants, but little is known about the interaction of genome size with other traits or about the role of genome size during different phases of the invasion process. By intercontinental comparison of native and invasive populations of the common reed Phragmites australis, we revealed a d...

Plant–microbe interactions play crucial roles in species invasions but are rarely investigated at the intraspecific level. Here, we study these interactions in three lineages of a globally distributed plant, Phragmites australis. We use field surveys and a common garden experiment to analyze bacterial communities in the rhizosphere of P. australis...

Phragmites australis is a cosmopolitan grass and often the dominant species in the ecosystems it inhabits. Due to high intraspecific diversity and phenotypic plasticity, P. australis has an extensive ecological amplitude and a great capacity to acclimate to adverse environmental conditions; it can therefore offer valuable insights into plant respon...

Plant–soil feedbacks (PSFs) influence plant competition via direct interactions with pathogens and mutualists or indirectly via apparent competition/mutualisms (i.e., spillover to co‐occurring plants) and soil legacy effects. It is currently unknown how intraspecific variation in PSFs interacts with the environment (e.g., nutrient availability) to...

Plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) can influence plant competition via direct interactions with pathogens and mutualists or indirectly via apparent competition/mutualisms (i.e., spillover to cooccurring plants) and soil legacy effects. Presently, it is unknown how intraspecific variation in PSFs interacts with the environment (e.g., nutrient availability)...

This account presents comprehensive information on the biology of Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. (P. communis Trin.; common reed) that is relevant to understanding its ecological characteristics and behaviour. The main topics are presented within the standard framework of the Biological Flora of the British Isles: distribution, habitat...

Much has been done to address the challenges of biological invasions, but fundamental questions (e.g., which species invade? Which habitats are invaded? How can invasions be effectively managed?) still need to be answered before the spread and impact of alien taxa can be effectively managed. Questions on the role of biogeography (e.g., how does bio...

The juxtaposition of plant-species invasions with latitudinal gradients in herbivore pressure is an important yet mostly unexplored issue in invasion biology. Latitudinal clines in defense and palatability to herbivores are expected to exist in native plant species but the evolution of these clines may lag behind for invasive plant species resultin...

Apparent competition, the negative interaction between species mediated by shared natural enemies, is thought to play an important role in shaping the structure and dynamics of natural communities. However, its importance in driving species invasions, and whether the strength of this indirect interaction varies across the latitudinal range of the i...

Evolutionary processes greatly impact the outcomes of biological invasions. An extensive body of research suggests that invasive populations often undergo phenotypic and ecological divergence from their native sources. Evolution also operates at different and distinct stages during the invasion process. Thus, it is important to incorporate evolutio...

For years, the development of classical biological has proven to be the most cost-effective and environmentally safe management tool for invasive species. Despite this, in the United States there are a number of political, regulatory and institutional challenges associated with the discovery stage, pre-release phase, and post-release monitoring tha...

Aim: The relationship between herbivory and latitude may differ between native and invasive plant taxa, which can generate biogeographical heterogeneity in the strength of enemy release. Our aim was to compare latitudinal gradients in herbivory between native and invasive plants and investigate whether gradients are driven by local adaptation or ph...

Scholars have focused on militaristic metaphors of invasion for more than a decade, but few if any studies look to the on-the-ground language of restoration practitioners to determine how they talk about invasive species. Here we demonstrate the absence of militaristic metaphors in one subset of restoration managers in coastal Rhode Island who mana...

The cosmopolitan reed grass Phragmites australis (Poaceae) is an intensively studied species globally with a substantial focus in the last two decades on its invasive populations. Here we argue that P. australis meets the criteria to serve as a model organism for studying plant invasions. First, as a dominant species in globally important wetland h...

Hydrologic restriction of salt marshes and subsequent invasion by Phragmites australis could influence the reproductive success of Fundulus heteroclitus, a common salt marsh resident that forages and spawns on the marsh surface at flood tide. Previous research in our laboratory using data from 2010 to 2011 examined the proportion of actively spawni...

We studied the relationship between genome size and ploidy level variation and plant traits for the reed grass Phragmites australis. Using a common garden approach on a global collection of populations in Aarhus, Denmark, we investigated the influence of monoploid genome size and ploidy level on the expression of P. australis growth, nutrition and...

Plants are expected to respond to global environmental change through shifts in functional traits and in their ranges. These shifts could alter productivity and interactions among species or genetic lineages, ultimately leading to changes in distributions and abundance. In particular, cosmopolitan species are predicted to increase growth with decre...

One explanation for why invasive species are successful is that they escape natural enemies from their native range or experience lower attack from natural enemies in the introduced range relative to native species (i.e., the enemy-release hypothesis). However, little is known about how invasive plants interact with co-introduced herbivores or natu...

Conservation scientists and practitioners have long recognized that not all non-native species pose a threat to biodiversity, yet some ecologists still fail to grasp this message (1). The conclusions drawn by Thomas and Palmer (2) that non-native plant species are not a threat to floral diversity in Britain highlight how this lack of understanding...

Theory predicts that native plant species should exhibit latitudinal gradients in the strength of their interactions with herbivores. We hypothesize that if an invasive plant species exhibits a different latitudinal gradient in response to herbivores (e.g., a nonparallel gradient), it can create large-scale heterogeneities in community resistance/s...

Phragmites australis (common reed) is one of the most successful invaders in the wetlands of North America. It has been invading aggressively both the inland freshwater and brackish coastal marsh ecosystems of North America producing large monotypic stands. The invasion by this species is followed by a series of ecological alterations in the wetlan...