Trends in Ecology & Evolution
OpinionInvasion Biology: Specific Problems and Possible Solutions
Section snippets
Invasion Biology in Turmoil
Despite some recent strife [1], invasion biology is generally regarded as an important and useful scientific endeavor at the crossroads of ecology and conservation biology [2]. It has a strong management component because it is – just like conservation biology – both a field of research and a field of action. Support from society is therefore essential for this discipline – from the policy makers that decide the focus of research programs to the citizens that can help to implement management
Specific Difficulties Related to Invasion Biology
We identify here 24 specific difficulties and problems of invasion biology that we, as scientists, need to act upon. We classify these problems into four distinct types of difficulties: understanding, alerting, supporting, and implementing issues stemming from invasion biology.
Scientific Progress
Although invasion biology has grown enormously in the past decades, a new level must now be reached to face the current challenges of this field both from within and outside. As suggested above, improving the theoretical corpus and developing new predictive tools, both at the level of ecosystem trajectories and at larger scales (scenarios for global invasions in the coming decades), would benefit the discipline not only regarding the issue of understanding but also well beyond, into alerting
Acknowledgments
We thank Christoph Kueffer for helpful discussions and Marcel Rejmánek for useful suggestions. This work was carried out in the context of the BiodivERsA European Research Area (ERA)-Net FFII grant, Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and BNP Paribas grant InvaCost and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grants JE 288/8-1, JE 288/9-1.
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