Abstract
Invasion biology is concerned with understanding the causes and consequences of the human-assisted introduction of organisms outside their native ranges. Ever since Elton published the foundational book “The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants” (Elton 1958), the field has gained enormous importance in ecology. A major motivation in developing the discipline has been the growing concern over the environmental, economic and social impact caused by some invaders (Martin and Maron 2012). Non-indigenous species (NIS, hereafter) are an important cause of species extinction, as exemplified by the introduction of the Brown snake in Guam (Fritts and Rodda 1998) or the Nile perch in the African great lakes (Miller 1989); alter key ecosystem functions, like the nutrients cycle and fire regimes (Vitousek et al. 1987; Levine et al. 2004; Callaway and Maron 2006; Vilà et al. 2011); and generate every year millions of euros of economic loses (Pimentel et al. 2001).
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Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to Pepe Tella, Oriol Lapiedra, Joan Maspons and Ferran Sayol for reviewing the chapter, and to Louis Lefebvre, Richard Duncan, Tim Blackburn, Phill Cassey, Miquel Vall-llosera, Montse Vilà, Tamas Székely, Joan Pino, Salit Kark, Sven Bacher, Wojciech Solarz, Wolfgang Nentwig, Simon Reader and Diego Vasquez for fruitful discussions over the past years. This work was supported by a Proyecto de Investigación (ref. CGL2013-47448-P) from the Spanish government.
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Sol, D. (2016). Progresses and Controversies in Invasion Biology. In: Mateo, R., Arroyo, B., Garcia, J. (eds) Current Trends in Wildlife Research. Wildlife Research Monographs, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27912-1_8
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