Sven Bacher is a professor at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and is visiting the C·I·B for one month in January/February 2016. Sven has worked on biological invasions for more than 15 years and is particularly interested in conceptual issues and syntheses that improve the field. He worked on most parts of the invasion process and with various taxonomic groups (insects, vertebrates, plants). He (co-)authored 67 papers in ISI listed journals and is member of the editorial boards of Oecologia, Journal of Applied Entomology and NeoBiota. Furthermore, he served as an expert in alien species for the European Commission and for the Swiss and German Ministries of the Environment.
During his C·I·B fellowship, Sven will collaborate with Sabrina Kumschick, John Wilson, Cang Hui and other C·I·B members on projects aiming at developing generic methods for classifying impacts of alien species. Of particular importance will be the development of a method to classify socio-economic impacts, analogous to the recently proposed EICAT method for environmental impacts (Blackburn et al. 2014). We will also discuss methods to link traits to impacts and compare traits among taxa.
Sven will also give a seminar about impact classification at the Department of Botany and Zoology and lead a discussion group of the SANBI Invasive Species Program with various stakeholders on issues of border control.