Which Taxa Are Alien? Criteria, Applications, and Uncertainties

By F. Essl, S. Bacher, P. Genovesi, P. Hulme, Jonathan M. Jeschke, Stelios Katsanevakis, I. Kowarik, I. Kühn, Petr Pyšek, W. Rabitsch and 5 more. BioScience, 2018

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Human activities such as the transport of species to new regions and modifications of the environment are increasingly reshaping the distribution of biota. Accordingly, developing robust, repeatable, and consistent definitions of alien species that serve scientific and policy purposes has become of prime importance. We provide a set of classification criteria that are widely applicable across taxa and realms and offer guidance on their use in practice. The criteria focus on (a) acknowledging the role of assessment uncertainty, (b) incorporating time since introduction, (c) considering infraspecific taxonomic ranks, and (d) differentiating between alien species whose survival depends on explicit human assistance from those that survive without such assistance. Furthermore, we make recommendations for reducing assessment uncertainty, suggest thresholds for species assessment, and develop an assessment scheme. We illustrate the application of the assessment criteria with case studies. Finally, the implications for alien species management, policy, and research are discussed.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/94b202fea741b2953b882537797a2bf7489421d5

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In Ecological Modeling

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Unpublished Mediterranean records of marine alien and cryptogenic species (2020, background): “The Kingdom and Phylum of each species, as well as its biogeographic status (alien or cryptogenic sensu Essl et al. 2018) were also included.”