%0 Journal Article
%T Toward ¡°Rules¡± for Studying Biological Invasions
%J The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America - Wiley Online Library
%D 2019
%R https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1607
%X Biological invasions are a key facet of global change, with documented rates of establishment of nonnative species rising exponentially over the last several decades across most taxa and all biological realms (Essl et al. 2011). This redistribution of the Earth's biodiversity has caused substantial health and economic harm to human societies and will affect current and future ecological and evolutionary dynamics. The field of invasion science has grown in relevance and purview as a result (Lockwood et al. 2013). This growth has mirrored that observed in environmental biology as a whole in terms of the variety of approaches employed, including laboratory experiments, smaller©\scale field experiments, long©\term field experiments, computational modeling, and the assembly and analysis of observational ¡°big data¡± sets gathered across multiple temporal and spatial scales. However, integrating these scientific approaches and their inherent spatial and temporal scales has proven challenging. In particular, invasion scientists have struggled to identify a coherent definition, measurement schema, and theory behind nonnative invasive species impacts (Blackburn et al. 2014, Jeschke et al. 2014). Species must cross distinct stages, or barriers, before they reach the last stage of this process and earn the moniker of ¡°invasive¡± (Blackburn et al. 2014). Invasive species thus are those that are well established and often increasing in population size and realize some geographical range expansion. Because they are widespread and abundant, invasive species tend also to impose major ecological effects on co©\occurring native populations, communities of native species, or the entire native ecosystem (Lockwood et al. 2013). These effects can be positive, negative, or both and may affect factors that human society values, or they may not (Jeschke et al. 2014). When these effects are considered notably detrimental to ecosystems, they are often labeled as negative impacts, with a recent move to also label effects that are considered to have positive benefits to species or people as positive impacts. A primary barrier to developing invasive species¡¯ impact theories is that they integrate biological mechanisms that span from individuals up to whole ecosystems and can thus be emergent and complex outcomes of how individual organisms interact with each other and their environment. Specific invasions are often idiosyncratic and thus must be studied in detail (Elliott©\Graves 2016). Recognizing that any ¡°rules¡± associated with biological invasions are inductively derived and have many
%U https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bes2.1607