Latest Journal of Applied Ecology - some interesting papers

There is a good section in the Journal of Applied Ecology this month on invasives/biocontrol, with 3 papers that caught my eye.  Not sure yet if we will review them for F1000, I will put forward the first one to Mark Lonsdale, but here is a summary of each:

April Review for F1000

An Experimental Test of Darwin’s Naturalization Hypothesis in Jiang, Jiaqi Tan, and Zhichao The American Naturalist, vol. 175, no. 4 (April 2010) pp. 415–423 DOI: 10.1086/650720

We decided to review the above paper as our April review for F1000.  This article is interesting because it is an elegant experimental test of Darwin's ‘Naturalization hypothesis’: a theory about the role of interspecific competition in invasion success.

Our Review 
Mark Lonsdale: Faculty of 1000 Biology, 19 Apr 2010 http://f1000biology.com/article/id/2902956/evaluation
Copyright F1000

Public seminar at CSIRO

Picking winners in biological control: holy grail or poisoned chalice

WEDNESDAY 14 APRIL AT 3PM
Public seminar
Dr Raghu Sathyamurthy – Arid Zone Research Institute, Dep. Resources Northern Territory
Venue: CSIRO Entomology
Abstract:
Managing the risks and costs of classical biological control while harnessing its benefits is an ongoing challenge for its utility in invasive species management. Significant economic and ecological gains can potentially be made in this regard, if we can predict the agents that have the highest likelihood of managing their target weed/insect pest (i.e. pick "winners"), and prioritise their importation, risk assessment and release. Developing innovative approaches to picking winners has therefore been the 'holy grail' of the discipline, a pursuit hastened in recent decades by the detection of non-target effects of ineffective biocontrol agents. In this talk I will outline one potentially valuable approach to such a pursuit. Using a case study of my research in weed biological control, I illustrate how a conceptual framework to tackle the mechanistic basis for invasiveness can help in selecting and prioritising agents with a higher likelihood of success. I conclude with some caveats on using such approaches, to avoid accidentally sipping from poisoned chalices in the pursuit of this holy grail