A number of hypotheses have been suggested to explain why invasive exotic plants dramatically increase their abundance upon transport to a new range. The novel weapons hypothesis argues that phytotoxins secreted by roots of an exotic plant are more effective against naïve resident competitors in the range being invaded. The common reed Phragmites australis has a diverse population structure inc...

An invasive species is one that arrives (oftenwith human assistance) in a habitat it had not previously occupied, then establishes a population and spreads autonomously. Species invasions are one of the main conservation threats today and have caused many species extinctions. The great majority of such invasions are by species introduced from elsewhere, although some native species have become ...

INTRODUCTION: The United States Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) Ecosystem Management and Restoration Research Program (EMRRP) is supporting a nationwide effort to address the impact of invasive woody plant species on ecosystem restoration, and more specifically, to determine mechanisms to address the most regionally prevalent invasive species impacting restoration activities. The research effort...

Identification of factors that drive changes in plant community structure and contribute to decline and endangerment of native plant species is essential to the development of appropriate management strategies. Introduced species are assumed to be driving causes of shifts in native plant communities, but unequivocal evidence supporting this view is frequently lacking. We measured native vegetat...

Weeds As Examples Weeds provide good examples to clarify what is meant by an invasive species because most people have a concept of what constitutes a " weed. " Invasion can be thought of as a process that in our example, a plant must go through to become a successful, yet harmful invader. Several barriers must be overcome for a plant to be considered an invasive weed. Invasive weeds are invasi...

Do invasive plant species have greater phenotypic plasticity than non-invasive species? And, if so, how does this affect their fitness relative to native, non-invasive species? What role might this play in plant invasions? To answer these long-standing questions, we conducted a meta-analysis using data from 75 invasive/non-invasive species pairs. Our analysis shows that invasive species demonst...