The anthropogenic introduction of exotic species is one of the greatest modern threats to marine biodiversity. Yet exotic species introductions remain difficult to predict and are easily misunderstood because knowledge of natural dispersal patterns, species diversity, and biogeography is often insufficient to distinguish between a broadly dispersed natural population and an exotic one. Here we ...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE Most exotic plants are usually labelled as alien invasives and targeted for eradication. However, some of these exotic plants play an important role in the traditional primary healthcare sector of the Bapedi culture in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The medicinal uses of most of these species have neither been documented nor their biological activity evalua...

Invasive alien species can have a detrimental economic impact on human enterprises such as agriculture, grazing, forestry and tourist activities. Forest invasive species have been identified as one the major threats to ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as human well-being. In this Hot Issue I have tried to collect information from research groups working on different aspects of forest invasi...

We used Malaise traps to examine the aerial arthropod community in riparian habitats dominated by native willow, exotic saltcedar, or a mixture of these two tree species in central Arizona, USA. Over the course of three sampling periods per year in 2003 and 2004, native habitats had significantly greater diversity (Shannon–Wiener) and supported different arthropod communities compared to exotic...

Biological invasions can dramatically alter ecosystems. An ability to predict the establishment success for exotic species is important for biosecurity and conservation purposes. I examine the exotic New Zealand ant fauna for characteristics that predict or determine an exotic species’ ability to establish. Quarantine records show interceptions of 66 ant species: 17 of which have established, 4...

The successful invasion of exotic plants is often attributed to the absence of coevolved enemies in the introduced range (i.e., the enemy release hypothesis). Nevertheless, several components of this hypothesis, including the role of generalist herbivores, remain relatively unexplored. We used repeated censuses of exclosures and paired controls to investigate the role of a generalist herbivore,...

this study was conducted to determine taxonomic feature of fishes from the headwaters of three riverine systems in kohgiluyeh and boyer-ahmad province (k & b) in southwestern iran during 2011 to 2013. fifteen species belonging to 4 families, and 3 orders from the karun river system, 10 species belonging to 4 families and 3 orders from the zohreh river system and 8 species belonging to 2 fam...

Invasive species are widely accepted as one of the leading direct causes of biodiversity loss. However, much of the evidence for this contention is based on simple correlations between exotic dominance and native species decline in degraded systems. Although appealing, direct causality is not the only possible interpretation. A plausible alternative hypothesis is that exotic dominance could be ...