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The globe is becoming ever more connected by shipping traffic and
travel. These connections lead to movement of many plants and animals to
new habitats. They arrive in the ballast water in the bellies of
transatlantic ships, on the soles of travellers’ shoes, they are brought
as decoration plants, and escape from researchers’ labs. Many new
arrivals do not survive, but those that do can cause severe economic
problems and threaten local plants and animals. For example, the
European zebra mussel introduced to Lake St. Clair (in the USA and
Canada) in 1998 quickly spread throughout the Great lakes area, clogging
intake pipes for power plants and other underwater structures. Zebra
mussels have caused billions of dollars of damage and greatly reduced
biodiversity of the invaded areas (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,
2000).
Increasing numbers of invasions have made invasion biology to be a
high profile area in recent years. Considerable efforts are going into
recording the invasion process and compiling the existing data into
databases. The ultimate goal is to answer why do some species become so
successful at invading new habitats. The current knowledge indicates
that there is no general answer to this question, but it is system,
species and environment dependent.
One important aspect of an invasion is how fast does a population of
an invading species spread through a habitat. There is a growing and
sophisticated body of mathematical, statistical and computational
approaches that can help answer this question. This project will develop
a tool that will make these techniques available for wide audience of
ecologists and conservation scientists and will integrate them with the
existing data. Doing this will aid in developing prediction and
prevention strategies for managing invasive species.
Collaborators
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