(yes, I am still doing those!! But I rarely get time to post on the blog!)
Review of:
Modelling Hotspots for Invasive Alien Plants in India. by D Adhikari, R Tiwary and SK Barik
PLoS ONE 2015; 10(7):e0134665
Risk assessment for invasive species in the past has
tended to focus mainly on species’ attributes, rather than the role of the
invaded ecosystem. This paper explores the concept of invasion hotspots -
regions that are potentially vulnerable to invasion - using a large set of open
access species distribution datasets available from the Global Biodiversity
Information Facility (GBIF). A novel aspect of their approach is that they
don’t simply take into account the climatic niche, they also consider human ‘influences’
known to facilitate invasion processes by delineating ‘anthropogenic biomes’.
Where climatic suitability combines with vulnerable ecoregions and
anthropogenic biomes, this is considered a ‘hotspot’. The authors find that
biodiversity hotspots in India are especially vulnerable as invasion hotspots,
an important finding - especially so, as the regional status of invasive
species in India has been comparatively little studied. It also illustrates the
value for ecological science of mining open access biodiversity data. It would,
however, have been useful to see scale factors explored a little more; for
example, many invasion hotspots the authors identify are actually in protected
areas, though these are presumably within anthropogenic biomes.
