Invasions by alien plants are a significant threat to the biodiversity and functioning of ecosystems and the services they provide. The South African Working for Water program was established to address this problem. It needs to formulate objective and transparent priorities for clearing in the face of multiple and sometimes conflicting demands. This study used the analytic hierarchy process (a...

Plant traits associated with alien invasiveness may also distinguish rare from common native species. To test this, we grew 23 native (9 common, 14 rare) and 18 alien (8 common, 10 rare) herbaceous species in Switzerland from six plant families under nutrient-addition and competition treatments. Alien and common species achieved greater biomass than native and rare species did overall respectiv...

BACKGROUND Biogeographic patterns of species invasions hold important clues to solving the recalcitrant 'who', 'where', and 'why' questions of invasion biology, but the few existing studies make no attempt to distinguish alien floras (all non-native occurrences) from invasive floras (rapidly spreading species of significant management concern), nor have invasion biologists asked whether particu...

Biological invasion has become a serious global environmental problems and been considered as an important component of global change. Invasions by alien species can have an impact at several levels of ecological complexity from genes to ecosystems. Invasive alien species had seriously threated the biodiversity and natural ecosystems in China, and caused economic losses by more than US$7 billio...

*Correspondence: David M. Suckling, Better Border Biosecurity, The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd., PB 4704, Christchurch, New Zealand e-mail: max.suckling@ plantandfood.co.nz Biosecurity covers both long-term management of existing pests and the urgent government responses to alien invasive species which have yet to become fully established. Mating disruption, mass trapp...

Invasive alien species cause major changes to ecosystem functioning and patterns of biodiversity, and the main factors involved in invasion success remain contested. Using the Mediterranean island of Crete, Greece as a case study, we suggest a framework for analyzing spatial data of alien species distributions, based on environmental predictors, aiming to gain an understanding of their spatial ...

Approximately 50,000 plant, animal, and microbe invasive species are present in the United States, and an estimated 500,000 plant, animal, and microbe invasive species have invaded other nations of the world. Immediately, it should be pointed out that the US and world agriculture depend on introduced food crops and livestock. Approximately 99 % of all crops and livestock in all nations are inte...

Although invasive alien species have been identified as the second greatest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss, characterizing and quantifying their impacts on native species and habitats remains a fundamental problem in conservation biology. Here, I review the techniques that are currently used to assess the impact of invasive alien species on biodiversity, highlighting both their uses ...