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Book Review |
Section of Evolution and Ecology, University of California–Davis, California 95616 USA
Historically, there have always been migrating plant taxa, some expanding into areas distant from regions of their origin, others reclaiming areas from which they had been temporarily excluded due to adverse environmental conditions. Now, however, the rate of human-assisted migrations (i.e., invasions sensu Pysek et al., 2004
) of plants is several orders of magnitude higher. In California, for example, more than 1000 alien plant species, introduced either intentionally or accidentally, have established viable populations over the last 250 years. In the Galápagos Islands, throughout their three million year history, only one new plant species arrived with birds or sea currents approximately every 10 000 years (Porter, 1983
). Over the last 20 years, however, the human-assisted introduction rate has been about 10 species per year, or some 100 000 times the natural arrival rate (Tye, 2001
). At least in light of these numbers, current plant invasions are different from natural migrations.
In the 19th century, Alphonse De Candolle, Charles Darwin, and Joseph Hooker already paid a substantial attention to plant invasions. However, only after the publication of Charles Elton's (1958) classic The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants did invasion ecology emerge as a new discipline, first slowly (Salisbury, 1961
; Baker and Stebbins, 1965
) and later explosively (e.g., Drake et al. 1989
; Williamson, 1996
; Sandlund et al., 1999
; Child et al., 2003
). Recently, the number of edited volumes dedicated to plant invasions and to biological invasions in general has become almost overwhelming. There are even special journals dedicated completely (Biological Invasions) or partially (Diversity and Distributions) to biological invasions. The scope of contemporary invasion biology is broad, ranging from essentially theoretical studies (Shigesada and Kawasaki, 1997
), through studies dealing with particular regions (Kowarik, 2003
; Tellman, 2002
), to practical recommendations of how to deal with particular invasive pest species (Sheley and Petroff 1999
; Bossard et al., 2000
). Nevertheless, what had been missing was a real summary, a synthesizing volume putting plant invasion biology into a broader context of contemporary ecology.
Now we have such a volume and if you want to buy only one book on plant invasions, this is it. Judith Myers and Dawn Bazely have written a book1 that can be used as a textbook for one semester/quarter upper-level undergraduate or even graduate course in plant invasions. Essentially, all the important topics are covered: 1) plant invasions in the landscape and in the context of plant communities (Chapters 2 and 3); 2) predictions of plant invasiveness based on life history characteristics of individual taxa (Chapter 4); 3) population ecology of invasive plants (Chapter 5); 4) introduced plant diseases and biological control of exotic pest plants (Chapters 6 and 7); 5) mathematical modeling of invasive plant population dynamics (Chapter 8); 6) management of non-native pest plants (Chapter 9). A few comments on potential problems with genetically modified plants are included in the concluding chapter. Selected field methods useful in the study of plant invasions are briefly introduced in the appendix.
This book is packed with an enormous amount of useful information. However, what is particularly important is that all carefully chosen examples are embedded in a broader ecological framework and related to many basic ecological concepts, theories, and hypotheses. For example, introduction and invasion of exotic species is treated as a special case of processes formalized in the theory of island biogeography. Invasions into communities are interpreted in terms of resource availability, intermediate disturbance hypothesis, different mechanisms of ecological succession, and species-complementarity hypothesis. Invasiveness of individual taxa is treated as a habitat specific variable depending on many tradeoffs between life history characters. Population dynamics of invaders is understood in the context of top-down, bottom-up, and density-dependent mechanisms and processes. The importance of properly designed experiments is repeatedly stressed and illustrated by many examples. Mathematical tools are used where needed and almost all of them should be understandable to college students of biology.
All diagrams, pictures, and boxes are very helpful. (The only mistake that I found is a reversal of axes names in Fig. A.6.)
Special attention is paid to biological control of undesirable exotic plants. This is definitely an extra plus for this book when compared with the also otherwise very useful recent textbook of weed ecology by Booth et al. (2003)
. Critical evaluation of our current impact assessment data (Chapter 3), as well as an introduction to cost and benefit analysis of control and eradication programs (Chapter 9) belong to very important elements of this volume. Only one area of contemporary invasion biology seems to be underrepresented: evolutionary/ population genetics aspects of plant invasions, including hybridization between invaders and natives and among invaders. Fortunately, a recently published book by Cox (2004)
complements Myers and Bazely's book very well and references to several important review papers (Barrett, Dahler, Ellstrand, Vilà) can be found there. Hybridization turns out to be extremely important, either as a factor or as a consequence of plant invasions (e.g., Ayres et al., 2003
; Brock, 2004
; Gaskin and Schaal, 2002
; Pysek et al., 2003
). Another important research area that has been developing only recently is phylogenetically controlled analyses of plant invasiveness (Grotkopp et al., 2002
, 2004
).
There are still serious gaps in our understanding of invasive plants. Many of them were identified in this book. Operational criteria for impact assessment of alien plants is one of them. Invasive species are often blamed for extinction of rare species. Invasive predators and pathogens provide several conclusive examples. As for plants, however, we still have to reach a more balanced view of what is really going on (Brooks et al., 2004
; Davis, 2003
; Farnsworth, 2004
; Houlahan and Findlay, 2004
; Rejmánek et al., 2005
). Even on islands, where numbers of exotic plant species are often increasing exponentially, extinctions of native plant species cannot be attributed to plant invasions per se (Sax et al., 2002
). Plant invasions are very often just symptoms of human-created changes in our environment rather than causes of those changes. As scientists, we should do our best to explain what we do know and what we do not know. Doing otherwise would only threaten our credibility. Myers and Bazely have done an excellent job in making this point quite clear. I cannot recommend their book highly enough.
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FOOTNOTES |
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2 Author for correspondence (e-mail: mrejmanek{at}ucdavis.edu
)
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LITERATURE CITED |
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 TOP LITERATURE CITED |
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Baker H. G. G. L. Stebbins 1965 The Genetics of Colonizing Species. Academic Press, New York, New York, USA
Booth B. D. S. D. Murphy C. J. Swanton 2003 Weed ecology in natural and agricultural systems. CACI Publishing, Wallingford, UK
Bossard C. C. J. M. Randall M. C. Hoshovsky [eds.] 2000 Invasive plants of California's wildlands. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, USA
Brock M. T. 2004 The potential for genetic assimilation of a native dandelion species, Taraxacum ceratophorum (Asteraceae), by the exotic congener T. officinale. American Journal of Botany 91: 656-663
Brooks M. L. C. M. D'Antonio D. M. Richardson J. B. Grace J. E. Keeley J. M. DiTomaso R. J. Hobbs M. Pellant D. Pyke 2004 Effects of invasive alien plants on fire regimes. BioScience 54: 677-688[CrossRef][ISI]
Child L. J. H. Brock G. Brundu K. Prach P. Pysek P. M. Wade M. Williamson [eds.] 2003 Plant invasions. Ecological threats and management solutions. Backhuys Publishers, Leiden, The Netherlands
Cox G. W. 2004 Alien species and evolution. Island Press, Washington DC, USA
Davis M. A. 2003 Does competition from new species threaten long-term residents with extinction?. BioScience 53: 481-489[CrossRef][ISI]
Drake J. A. H. A. Mooney F. di Castri R. H. Groves F. J. Kruger M. Rejmanek M. Williamson [eds.] 1989 Biological invasions. A global perspective. Wiley, Chichester, UK
Farnsworth E. J. 2004 Patterns of plant invasions at sites with rare plant species throughout New England. Rhodora 106: 97-117[ISI]
Gaskin J. F. B. A. Schaal 2002 Hybrid Tamarix widespread in U.S. invasion and undetected in native Asian range. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 99: 11256-11259
Grotkopp E. M. Rejmánek T. L. Rost 2002 Toward a causal explanation of plant invasiveness: seedling growth and life-history strategies of 29 pine (Pinus) species. American Naturalist 159: 396-419[CrossRef][ISI]
Grotkopp E. M. Rejmánek M. J. Sanderson T. L. Rost 2004 Evolution of genome size in pines (Pinus) and its life-history correlates: supertree analyses. Evolution 58: 1705-1729[CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
Houlahan J. E. C. S. Findlay 2004 Effect of invasive plant species on temperate wetland plant diversity. Conservation Biology 18: 1132-1138[CrossRef][ISI]
Kowarik I. 2003 Biologische Invasionen: Neophyten und Neozoen in Mitteleuropa. Ulmer, Stuttgart, Germany
Porter D. M. 1983 Vascular plants of the Galapagos: origins and dispersal. In R. I. Bowman, M. Berson, and A. E. Leviton [eds.], Patterns of evolution in Galapagos organisms, 33–96. American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco, California, USA
Pysek P. J. H. Brock K. Bimova B. Mandak V. Jarosik I. Koukolikova J. Pergl J. Stepanek 2003 Vegetative regeneration in invasive Reynoutria (Polygonaceae) taxa: the determinant of invasibility at the genotype level. American Journal of Botany 90: 1487-1495
Pysek P. D. M. Richardson M. Rejmánek G. Webster M. Williamson J. Kirschner 2005 Alien plants in checklists and floras: towards better communication between taxonomists and ecologists. Taxon 53: 131-143[CrossRef][ISI]
Rejmánek M. D. M. Richardson P. Pysek 2004 Plant invasions and invasibility of plant communities. In E. van der Maarel [ed.], Vegetation ecology, 332–355. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK
Salisbury E. 1961 Weeds and Aliens. Collins, London, UK
Sandlund O. T. P. J. Schei A. Vilken [eds.] 1999 Invasive Species and Biodiversity Management. Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Sax D. F. J. H. Brown S. D. Gaines 2002 Species invasions exceed extinctions on islands world-wide: a comparative study of plants and birds. American Naturalist 160: 766-783[CrossRef][ISI]
Sheley R. L. J. K. Petroff 1999 Biology and management of noxious rangeland weeds. Oregon State University Press, Corvalis, Oregon, USA
Shigesada N. K. Kawasaki 1997 Biological invasions: theory and practice. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK
Tellman B. [ed.] 2002 Invasive exotic species in the Sonoran region. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Tye A. 2001 Invasive plant problems and requirements for weed risk assessment in the Galapagos Islands. In R. H. Groves, F. D. Panetta, and J. G. Virtue [eds.], Weed Risk Assessment, 153–175. CSIRO, Collingwood, Australia
Williamson M. H. 1996 Biological Invasions. Chapman and Hall, London, UK
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