Does Climate Change Promote Invasive Species? - article in Harvard Magazine

[kestrel91316]

http://harvardmagazine.com/harvard-in-the-news/climate-change-benefits-invasive-species

Does Climate Change Promote Invasive Species?

Climate change will make invasive plants even more dominant in the landscape, a study by a team of researchers including three Harvard scientists has found.

Published in the online journal PLoS One, their paper is the first demonstration that climate change likely plays a direct role in promoting non-native species’ success, according to a press release from Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Climate change will lead to an as-yet unknown shuffling of species, and it appears that invasive species will become more dominant,” Charles C. Davis (one of the researchers, and an assistant professor in Harvard’s department of organismic and evolutionary biology) said in the press release.

The study used a dataset that began with Henry David Thoreau’s cataloging of plants around Walden Pond in the 1850s, when the author and naturalist kept meticulous notes documenting natural history, plant species occurrences, and flowering times. Since then, the mean annual temperature around Concord, Massachusetts, has increased by 2.4 degrees Celsius, or 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, causing some plants to shift their flowering time by as much as three weeks in response to ever-earlier spring thaws.

The researchers’ current work finds that non-native plants, and especially invasive species, thrive during times of climate change because they’re better able to adjust the timing of annual activities like flowering and fruiting. It builds upon a 2008 paper by Davis and colleagues which reported that some 27 percent of all species Thoreau recorded from 1851 to 1858 at Walden Woods are now locally extinct, and another 36 percent are so sparse that extinction may be imminent

(snip)

Read more at above link

[Warpy]

1. Life will occupy any niche it finds conducive to growth

While some species can be labeled "invasive" because they're simply not useful in abundance, this is how the world works and what life is supposed to do.

They're finding abundant life in places they never thought possible, like on the sea bed and deep within rock. If there is any sort of environment that doesn't incinerate or freeze it immediately, some form of life will exploit it.

[kestrel91316]

2. Diverse, healthy ecosystems are MUCH more resistant to invasives

than the pitiful, deteriorated, damaged remnants we humans have left in our path. Sigh.

I don't want to live in a world full of endless cheat grass and yellow star thistle.

[Warpy]

5. Ever see kudzu?

The only difference is that kudzu produces an edible starch in its roots. Driven to desperation, we can eat that stuff.

I'm sure that over the next century, we're going to have to get used to eating a whole lot of new stuff.

[thereismore]

3. Duh. And local "non-invasive" species will populate some other area and become "invasive".

Or disappear. It's all in flux. We have fucked it all up.

[depakid]

4. Strange things have been turning up in Sydney Harbor lately

Delicate duo ... a diver admires the male ornate ghost pipefish (main) and his female partner (inset) in Sydney Harbour.
-------------

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/exotic-immigrant-brings-rare-colour-to-the-harbour-20100223-p0pe.html

On another note: I'll be interested to hear about how all the Olive trees that have been sprouting up in Britain fared this last winter.