Comments on Feb 1 version

Posted by parker at February 19. 2010

Hi all, in looking through the outline, my main concern is that it is trying to cover too much ground. Nearly all of the major theories of invasion are mentioned at some point, and doing a review of invasion theories might not be different enough (no pun intended) from what is out there already . This may be an unfounded criticism, however, as Cini and Rob are likely just getting all the various thoughts down on paper and these can easily be whittled out later. Others may see a review as more important than i, but my general notion is that a provocative thought-piece that doesn't try to touch all the bases could be equally if not more useful than a comprehensive review. just my 2c...

Introduction (Section 1):

I agree with earlier concerns that setting up the paper to deconstruct a 'false' native-exotic dichotomy might lead us down the path of having it misrepresented. Instead, I think an Introduction could focus on:

1) invasive species have demonstrable impacts in their away ranges. to predict and thus manage these impacts, research has focused on asking how and why invaders are 'different'.

2) the only 'difference' that we know exists on a rock-solid basis is evolutionary history: natives and exotics evolved in different settings with different selective pressures. in general, this had led to 2 broad classifications of differentness: 1) particular evolved traits make particular invaders pre-adapted for becoming ecologically dominant, 2) particular community-level traits make communities more invasible.

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We will argue that existing approaches are largely based on an a priori assumption that exotic species are different, or on biased tests of these differences, and thus one of the first principles in invasion biology is surprisingly ambiguously defined.

Section 2: What data EXIST and what data are NEEDED to answer these questions? What is the appropriate control group? -native vs. introduced genotypes? native and introduced competitors in the same community? invaders vs. abundant natives?

A large portion of the paper could emphasize that there are several reasons why there has been relatively little consensus about the general question of 'differentness', including a disproportionate focus on problematic invaders could indicate species-specific traits rather than general traits, different scales of focus (e.g., population vs. community vs. biogeographic differences), etc

that's all for now...more soon!

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Comments on Feb 1 version

Comments on Feb 1 version

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