Conceptual Ecology and Invasion Biology: Reciprocal Approaches to Nature

The conservation threat represented by invasive species is well-known, but the scientific opportunities are underappreciated. Invasion studies have historically been largely directed at the important job of collecting case studies. Invasion biology has matured to the point of being able to incorporating itself into the heart of ecology, and should be viewed as extensions or critical experiments of ecological theory.

In this edited volume, global experts in ecology and evolutionary biology explore how theories in ecology elucidate the invasion processes while also examining how specific invasions informs ecological theory. This reciprocal benefit is highlighted in a number of scales of organization: population, community and biogeographic, while employing example invaders in all major groups of organisms and from a number of regions around the globe. The chapters in this volume utilize many of the cutting edge observational, experimental, analytical and computational methods used in modern ecology. Through merging conceptual ecology and invasion biology we can obtain a better understanding of the invasion process while also developing a better understanding of how ecological systems function.

Highlights how theory can be used to understand species invasions Examines invasions across many spatial and temporal scales Utilizes many of the most up-to-date experimental, analytical and computational methods

Inhalt
Introduction, history and terminology.- Tracking the tractable: using invasion to guide the exploration of conceptual ecology.- Darwin to Elton: early ecology and the problem of invasive species.- Invasion biology 1958-2005: the pursuit of science and conservation.- Invasiveness in exotic plants: immigration and naturalization in an ecological continuum.- Populations at play.- Density dependence in invasive plants: demography, herbivory, spread and evolution.- Stochasticty, nonlinearity and instability in biological invasions.- Local interactions and invasion dynamics: population growth in space and time.- A guide to calculating discrete-time invasion rates from data.- The role of evolutionary genetiocs in studies of plant invasions.- Unwlcomed visitors: species interactions.- Contact experience, alien-native interactions, and their community consequences: a theoretical consideration on the role of adaptation in biological invasion.- Use of biological invasions and their control to study the dynamics of interacting populations.- Invasibility of seed prdators on synchronized intermittent seed production of host plants.- Invasion and the regulation of plant populations by pathogens.- Exploring the relationship between nichie breadth and invasion success.- Interactions between invasive plants and soil ecosystem: positive feedbacks and their potential to persist.- Invasion biology as a community process: messages from microbial microcosms.- Large-scale consequences and pattern of invasions.- Understanding invasions in patchy habitats through metapopulation theory.- Competition and the assembly of introduced bird communities.- Room for one more? Evidence for invasibility and saturation in ecological communities.- Ther biogeography of naturalized species and the species-arearelationship: reciprocal insights to biogeography ans invasion biology.- Synthesis.- Linking scale dependent processes in invasions.