Readings and Homework for 2/28

Direct Disturbance and its Effects on Invasion (Wednesday's class):

• "Disturbance, Diversity and Invasion: Implications for Conservation." by Richard J. Hobbs and Laura F. Huenneke. (1992) Conservation Biology. 6(3) pp. 324-337. [must be on campus or logged on with library barcode to access]
  
• "The role of spatial and temporal scale in colonization and spread of invasive shrubs in early successional habitats" by Vanessa S. Johnson, John A. Litvaitis, Thomas D. Lee and Serita D. Frey. (2006) Forest Ecology and Management. 228 pp. 124-134. [must be on campus or logged on with library barcode to access]

Also, come to class prepared to discuss the implications disturbance has had or is having on your adopted species.

Readings for 2/26

Topic: Indirect Disturbance and its Effects on Invasion (scheduling has led us to switch things around a bit and cover indirect disturbance before direct disturbance).

Our Guest Speaker for today will be Dr. Jeffrey Dukes. Readings are below...

• Does global change increase the success of biological invaders? by Jeffrey Dukes and Harold Mooney. (1999) Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 14(4) pp. 135-139.
  
• Impacts of Biological Invasions on Disturbance Regimes. by Michelle C. Mack and Carla M. D'Antonio. (1998) Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 13(5) pp. 195-198. [You need to on campus or logged in with your library barcode to get this article]

Readings for 2/21

Getting back on track after the snow day and Monday holiday...

Wednesday we'll be covering the Enemy Release Hypothesis, the readings were originally assigned for a previous class.

Addendum to readings for 2/14

Rick has added one additional paper for discussion in class on 2/14:

• Phillips et al. 2006. "Invasion and the evolution of speed in toads." Nature. 439: p. 803. [must be on campus or use library barcode for access]
  

Readings for 2/12/07-2/14/07

Rick will be lecturing this week, the assigned readings for Monday are as follows:

• Frankham, R. 2003. "Genetics and conservation biology." C. R. Biologies. 326: 522-529.
  
• Mooney and Cleland. 2001. "The evolutionary impact of invasive species." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 98(10): 5446-5451.
  
• Tsutsui et al. 2003. "Genetic diversity, asymmetrical aggression, and recognition in a widespread invasive species." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 100(3): 1078-1083.

Rick says:

"...read Frankham 2003 first. This is a basic overview of small population dynamics as they apply to conservation biology. Think about why the dynamics of endangered species might be different from new introductions of invasives. In my lecture I will cover founder, drift and inbreeding. The second paper to read is Mooney and Cleland 2001. This is a quick review of evolutionary processes in invasive species. The third paper, Tsutsui 2003, is a case study on the Argentinian Ant invasion. Very unusual circumstances. Some of these discussions may flow into Wed's class and I may add one more paper for Wed. ."

Note that the discussion of these readings may extend into Wednesday's class, but there may also be one additional paper assigned for Wednesday.

Readings and Homework for 2/7

Readings:

• "Is invasion success explained by the enemy release hypothesis?" (.pdf) Colautti et al. (2004) Ecology Letters. Vol. 7, pp. 721-733.
  
• "Feedback with soil biota contributes to plant rarity and invasiveness in communities." (.pdf) Klironomos, J.N. (2002) Nature. Vol. 417, pp. 67-70. *Note: You must be on campus or log in with your library barcode to view this article.

Homework: Be prepared to discuss the biological characteristics that are thought to have made your species a successful invader.

10 Important Invasive Species Issues

The ten invasive species issues I covered in class 1/29 are now available online here. (Just a reminder that in general I will not be providing copies of the Powerpoint presentations I give in class, so take notes!)