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.
A central goal of invasion biology is to prevent or reduce the impacts of invaders on the environment, economy and society. One highly effective way to reduce invasive species impacts in a country is to prevent the introduction of harmful species in the first place.
Invasive plants compete with native plants for important resources like water and nutrients, often outcompeting or even causing local extinction of indigenous plants. Australian acacias are one such group of plants in South Africa...
The island of South Georgia is a British oversees territory situated to the north of the Antarctic Peninsula. Despite being a wildlife heaven, human activities have had profound impacts on the flora and fauna of the island.
The 11th Savanna Science Network Meeting was again held in Skukuza between 3 and 8 March 2013. Over the last decade, this has become one of the premier conservation and ecology conferences in South Africa, attracting many of the world’s most prominent savanna ecosystem scientists, and is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
