Plants that can self-fertilise are more likely to become invasive than those that cannot and among invasive plants, those that can self-fertilise have invaded larger areas. While this is intuitive, it has not yet been shown that this is a causal relationship, as many introduced plants receive visits from pollinators in the novel range.
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, is a highly invasive species throughout the world and is considered one of the world’s most devastating insect pests. In South Africa, the costs of crop losses and control operations exceed R18 million per annum.
The human-mediated movement of species around the world has added several layers of complexity to the management of ecosystems. Once alien species are established in a new region they are extremely difficult or impossible to eradicate, and control is expensive and often ineffective.
Following Charles Elton’s pioneering work, invasion ecology has grown into a mainstream research field focusing on the patterns and processes of human-mediated translocation of alien organisms. As probably the most iconic taxa in conservation, birds provide an ideal natural experiment to test many theories and hypotheses in invasion ecology.
Most people think of Antarctica as completely covered in ice. Ice-free areas cover only 0.4 % of the total continental area and until relatively recently it was thought that most were barren and largely devoid of life.
