Biological invasions and natural colonisations: are they that different?

We argue that human-mediated invasions are part of the spectrum of species movements, not a unique phenomenon, because species self-dispersing into novel environments are subject to the same barriers of survival, reproduction, dispersal and further range expansion as those assisted by people. Species changing their distributions by human-mediated and non-human mediated modes should be of identical scientific interest to invasion ecology and ecology. Distinctions between human-mediated invasions and natural colonisations are very valid for management and policy, but we argue that these are value-laden distinctions and not necessarily an appropriate division for science, which instead should focus on distinctions based on processes and mechanisms. We propose an all-encompassing framework of species range expansion. This does not detract from the importance of invasion biology as a discipline, but instead will help bring together research being conducted on multiple taxa, and by multiple disciplines, including epidemiology, that are often focused on an identical phenomenon: colonisation.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Unknown venue

• Publication date

  2016-03-16

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3897/NEOBIOTA.29.6959
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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