Biological invasions pose a rapidly expanding threat to the persistence, functioning and service provisioning of ecosystems globally, and to socio-economic interests. The stages of successful invasions are driven by the same mechanism that underlies adaptive changes across species in general-via natural selection on intraspecific variation in traits that influence survival and reproductive performance (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStandardised terminology in science is important for clarity of interpretation and communication. In invasion science - a dynamic and rapidly evolving discipline - the proliferation of technical terminology has lacked a standardised framework for its development. The result is a convoluted and inconsistent usage of terminology, with various discrepancies in descriptions of damage and interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUrbanization is an important driver of global change associated with a set of environmental modifications that affect the introduction and distribution of invasive non-native species (species with populations transported by humans beyond their natural biogeographic range that established and are spreading in their introduced range; hereafter, invasive species). These species are recognized as a cause of large ecological and economic losses. Nevertheless, the economic impacts of these species in urban areas are still poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral hundred studies have attempted to estimate the monetary cost arising from the management and/or impacts of invasive alien species. However, the diversity of methods used to estimate the monetary costs of invasive alien species, the types of costs that have been reported, and the spatial scales at which they have been assessed raise important questions as to the precision of these reported monetary costs. Benford's Law has been increasingly used as a diagnostic tool to assess the accuracy and reliability of estimates reported in financial accounts but has rarely been applied to audit data on environmental costs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiological invasions are a global challenge that has received insufficient attention. Recently available cost syntheses have provided policy- and decision makers with reliable and up-to-date information on the economic impacts of biological invasions, aiming to motivate effective management. The resultant database is now publicly and freely accessible and enables rapid extraction of monetary cost information.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Biological invasions threaten the functioning of ecosystems, biodiversity, and human well-being by degrading ecosystem services and eliciting massive economic costs. The European Union has historically been a hub for cultural development and global trade, and thus, has extensive opportunities for the introduction and spread of alien species. While reported costs of biological invasions to some member states have been recently assessed, ongoing knowledge gaps in taxonomic and spatio-temporal data suggest that these costs were considerably underestimated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA collective understanding of economic impacts and in particular of monetary costs of biological invasions is lacking for the Nordic region. This paper synthesizes findings from the literature on costs of invasions in the Nordic countries together with expert elicitation. The analysis of cost data has been made possible through the InvaCost database, a globally open repository of monetary costs that allows for the use of temporal, spatial, and taxonomic descriptors facilitating a better understanding of how costs are distributed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHarmful algal blooms (HABs) have been a pervasive challenge across coastal communities of the U.S. West Coast in recent years negatively affecting local economies and livelihoods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHarmful Algae
October 2022
The recreational razor clam fishery is the largest recreational bivalve fishery in the Pacific Northwest and a major source of tourism-related income to small communities in the region. Delays and closures of recreational shellfisheries due to the increasing frequency of harmful algal blooms (HABs) threaten to have significant negative impacts on fishery dependent communities. Coupling previous recreational shellfishing expenditure estimates from the literature with a novel dataset of daily visits to local businesses, we estimate a range of economic impacts resulting from the cancellation of razor clam digs at Long Beach, WA, the most popular beach in the State for recreational clam diggers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe global increase in biological invasions is placing growing pressure on the management of ecological and economic systems. However, the effectiveness of current management expenditure is difficult to assess due to a lack of standardised measurement across spatial, taxonomic and temporal scales. Furthermore, there is no quantification of the spending difference between pre-invasion (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvasive alien species (IAS) are a growing global ecological problem. Reports on the socio-economic impacts of biological invasions are accumulating, but our understanding of temporal trends across regions and taxa remains scarce. Accordingly, we investigated temporal trends in the economic cost of IAS and cost-reporting literature using the InvaCost database and meta-regression modelling approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite voluminous literature identifying the impacts of invasive species, summaries of monetary costs for some taxonomic groups remain limited. Invasive alien crustaceans often have profound impacts on recipient ecosystems, but there may be great unknowns related to their economic costs. Using the InvaCost database, we quantify and analyse reported costs associated with invasive crustaceans globally across taxonomic, spatial, and temporal descriptors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMetal pollution is one of the main environmental threats in freshwater ecosystems. Aquatic animals can accumulate these substances and transfer them across the food web, posing risks for both predators and humans. Accumulation patterns strongly vary depending on the location, species, and size (which in fish and crayfish is related to age) of individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvasive alien fishes have had pernicious ecological and economic impacts on both aquatic ecosystems and human societies. However, a comprehensive and collective assessment of their monetary costs is still lacking. In this study, we collected and reviewed reported data on the economic impacts of invasive alien fishes using InvaCost, the most comprehensive global database of invasion costs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe contend that the exclusive focus on the English language in scientific research might hinder effective communication between scientists and practitioners or policy makers whose mother tongue is non-English. This barrier in scientific knowledge and data transfer likely leads to significant knowledge gaps and may create biases when providing global patterns in many fields of science. To demonstrate this, we compiled data on the global economic costs of invasive alien species reported in 15 non-English languages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClosing of the marine commons increases economic returns and slows depletion of valuable ocean resources. Rights-based management is widely used for fisheries rationalization. Regulators with sound biological and economic information can in theory set overall harvest control rules that protect the fish stocks, and manage for external costs and benefits from harvest.
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