In Search of the Holy Grail: Seeking an Overarching Framework for Understanding Biological Invasions

PEARSON, DEAN E.; HIERRO, JOSÉ L.; Ö. EREN; Y. ORTEGA; D. VILLARREAL

Congreso; 2nd North America Congress for Conservation Biology; 2014

Biological invasions represent one of the greatest global threats to the biological diversity and ecological integrity of natural systems. Yet, despite an exponential increase in research on invasive species issues since 1990, advances in understanding and mitigating invader impacts continue to lag. One reason for this is that current conceptual frameworks for invasion do not address the inherent biogeographic nature of invasions or provide a means for organizing the many current invasion hypotheses. Here, we propose an overarching conceptual framework for understanding invasions in a biogeographic context that helps to resolve recent debates in this field and integrate recently proposed frameworks. We introduce this framework and briefly demonstrate its application using preliminary data from a biogeographic study of 33 species that are native to Turkey and introduced to Montana and Argentina.