Non-native gall-inducing insects on forest trees: a global review

Non-native fruit trees facilitate colonization of native forest on abandoned farmland

Ecological restoration of abandoned, formerly forested farmland can improve the delivery of ecosystem services and benefit biodiversity conservation. Restoration programs can involve removing isolated, non-native trees planted by farmers for fruit or wood. As such “legacy” trees can attract seed dispersers and create microclimates that help native seedlings to establish, removing them may actua...

Invasive Forest Insects, Introduced Forest Trees, and Altered Ecosystems Ecological Pest Management in Global Forests of a Changing World

Adaptive radiation of gall-inducing insects within a single host-plant species.

Speciation of plant-feeding insects is typically associated with host-plant shifts, with subsequent divergent selection and adaptation to the ecological conditions associated with the new plant. However, a few insect groups have apparently undergone speciation while remaining on the same host-plant species, and such radiations may provide novel insights into the causes of adaptive radiation. We...

Economic Impacts of Non-Native Forest Insects in the Continental United States

Reliable estimates of the impacts and costs of biological invasions are critical to developing credible management, trade and regulatory policies. Worldwide, forests and urban trees provide important ecosystem services as well as economic and social benefits, but are threatened by non-native insects. More than 450 non-native forest insects are established in the United States but estimates of b...

Inducing Cost-Sensitive Non-Linear Decision Trees

This paper presents a new decision tree learning algorithm that takes account of costs of misclassification. The algorithm is based on the hypothesis that non-linear decision nodes provide a better basis for cost-sensitive induction than axis-parallel decision nodes and utilizes discriminant analysis to construct non-linear cost-sensitive decision trees. The performance of the algorithm is eval...