When Biocontrol Isn’t Effective: Making Predictions and Understanding Consequences

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Invasive species are a major threat to global biodiversity, second only to habitat destruction. One solution to the invasive plant species problem is biological control. Sometimes biological control is successful, and sometimes it is not. Thus, it is critical for ecologists to predict the likely success of biological control, and how much damage the control agent must inflict on an invasive species in order to significantly reduce its rate of population growth.

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Primary or BEN resource type	Assignment/activity (non-laboratory)
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Format	html
Ecological Core Concept	Interspecific interactions Applied ecology -- Management
Drought & Water-Ecosystem Services Collection	Off
Conservation Targets Under Global Change Collection	Off
Big Data Collection	Off
Editor's Choice	No
Audience	Undergraduate upper division 15-16 Undergraduate lower division 13-14
Pedagogical Use Description	In this issue students can build on interpreting graphs and teaching each other, to exploring how matrix models are used to predict potential effectiveness of biological control using an example from the literature. This exercise allows them to integrate research data into a computer program (R, which is freely available on the internet, http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/), hypothesize about and interpret their results, teach other students, and understand the application of the research. Further, they will learn about how trophic cascades can result in unintended consequences when scientists and communities decide to go forward with introducing biological control agents.
Keywords	biological control, demography, herbivory, indirect effects, invasive species, matrix modeling, population ecology, plant tolerance, trophic cascades, TIEE
Life science discipline (subject)	Ecology
Primary Author Controlled Name	Michele R. Schutzenhofer
Primary Author Affiliation	Washington University in St. Louis
Primary Author email	N/A
Rights	Author retains copyrights
Resource Editor	Unknown
Reviewer A	Unknown
Reviewer B	Unknown
Date Of Record Submission	2009-02-01

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