Browsing Tag 'Invasive species'
Many trees with large seeds rely on vertebrate seed predators to disperse their seeds. The whitebark pine, a key subalpine species, has coevolved with the Clark’s nutcracker into a tight mutualism. In their paper in the April Ecological Applications, Shawn McKinney, a post-doc at the University of Montana, and his colleagues studied a natural disruption [...]
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The state governments of Maryland and Virginia, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, announced yesterday that Asian oysters will not be allowed in the Chesapeake bay. The decision capped a five-year study on the nonnative oyster to assess its potential to replace the rapidly diminishing native Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica. The decision ultimately came [...]
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The concept of biological control is no new idea in ecology – people have been transporting living things to control other living things since the late 18th century. The most famous examples seem to be the big failures, where biocontrols become invasive themselves – such as mongooses introduced to Hawaii to control rats but that [...]
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Good science writers – as with all reporters – should verify the validity of their stories before publishing, making sure to cite the peer-reviewed research detailing a new discovery. But as in the case of the purported cane toad-eating frog, an exciting enough fact with weak empirical support can sometimes take off like….well, an invasive [...]
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Invasive species often succeed in new environments because they can outcompete native species within an area for some resource, such as food, mates or habitat. What’s less clear is exactly what gives them this edge over local species that should be experts at living in their home territory. A study by Joshua King and Walter [...]
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