Have the Harmful Effects of Introduced Rats on Islands been Exaggerated?

By D. Towns, I. Atkinson, Charles H. Daugherty. Biological Invasions, 2006

618 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Geography, Planning and Development

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f77354879317c6d83aaac6a72d467fa198fe6945

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. James C. Russell
2. J. S. Clair
3. C. Donlan
4. A. Shiels
5. M. Clout
6. D. B. Harris
7. K. Broome
8. D. Drake

In Geography, Planning and Development

1. James C. Russell
2. D. B. Harris
3. M. Clout
4. C. Donlan
5. D. Drake
6. A. Shiels
7. K. Campbell
8. J. S. Clair

Citations in the corpus

• Avoiding surprise effects on Surprise Island: alien species control in a multitrophic level perspective (2009, background): “Invasive alien species are responsible for a very large fraction of documented island vertebrate extinctions (Dulloo et al. 2002; Courchamp et al. 2003; Towns et al. 2006), and the same is probably true for less studied organisms such as terrestrial invertebrates.”
• Bio-Economics of Large-Scale Eradication of Feral Goats From Santiago Island, Galápagos (2009, background): “Nonnative predators, such as rats (Rattus spp.) and cats (Felis silvestris catus), have decimated endemic rodent, reptile, and avian populations and have extirpated seabird colonies on islands around the globe (Nogales et al. 2004, Towns et al. 2006).”
• A review on the impacts of feral cats (Felis silvestriscatus) in the Canary Islands: implications for the conservation of its endangered fauna (2009, background): “Dietary studies could be a poor indicator of impacts on populations, particularly when the prey is rare or affected intermittently (Towns et al. 2006).”
• A review of the evidence for potential impacts of black rats (Rattus rattus) on wildlife and humans in Australia (2012, background): “Recently, Towns et al. (2006) reviewed the impacts of rats (including black rats) on island fauna, extending the earlier review of King (1985).”
• Are introduced rats (Rattus rattus) both seed predators and dispersers in Hawaii? (2011, background): “Rattus spp. can affect plant communities directly by destroying or dispersing seeds; however, on islands these rats are viewed mainly as seed predators (Campbell and Atkinson 2002; Towns et al. 2006; Meyer and Butaud 2009; Traveset et al. 2009; Towns 2009).”
• Dietary niche differentiation among three species of invasive rodents (Rattus rattus, R. exulans, Mus musculus) (2013, background): “…(Rattus rattus, black or ship rat; R. norvegicus, Norway rat; R. exulans, Pacific rat; Mus musculus, house mouse) have been introduced to many ecosystems and are among the most widespread and problematic invasive animals affecting islands (Towns et al. 2006; Angel et al. 2009; Drake and Hunt 2009).”
• Feral Cats and Biodiversity Conservation: The Urgent Prioritization of Island Management (2013, background): “…biological invasion, dietary studies are lim­ ited as an indicator of impacts on threatened species that are generally rare and unlikely to turn up in feral cat diet studies with samples sizes typical of those that have been published (Sinclair et al. 1998, Towns et al. 2006, Bonnaud et al. 2011).”
• Invasive rodents on islands: integrating historical and contemporary ecology (2009, background): “Based on the dramatic ecological impacts observed in contemporary field studies, ecologists have typically adopted a default hypothesis that invasive rats must have had strong impacts in the past (see critical review by Towns et al. 2006).”
• Biology and Impacts of Pacific Island Invasive Species. 11. Rattus rattus, the Black Rat (Rodentia: Muridae) (2014, background): “…carunculatus; robin, Petroica australis; fernbird, Bowdleria punctate; banded rail, Rallus philippensis; snipe, Coenocorypha iredalei; and bush wren, Xenicus longipes) went extinct following R. rattus invasion of Taukihepa Island, New Zealand ( Bell 1978, Atkinson 1989, Towns et al. 2006).”
• Intraguild predation and mesopredator release effect on long-lived prey (2009, background): “The direct impacts of some invasive species have been so severe so as to drive entire species to extinction (Towns et al., 2006).”
• Best practice guidelines for rat eradication on tropical islands (2015, background): “Invasive rats are one of the greatest threats to island biodiversity (Towns et al., 2006; Jones et al., 2008).”
• Review article: The catastrophic impact of invasive mammalian predators on birds of the UK Overseas Territories: a review and synthesis (2010, background): “(2005)), with maximum sizes increasing rather rapidly over time (Towns et al. 2006).”
• The impacts of invasive rodents on island invertebrates (2011, background): “Rodents that accompany human colonisation are a major contributor to this effect, likely accounting for more recent bird extinctions than any other single factor, and implicated in the extirpation of numerous small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and plant species (Johnson and Stattersfield, 1990; Bla”
• A review on the effects of alien rodents in the Balearic (Western Mediterranean Sea) and Canary Islands (Eastern Atlantic Ocean) (2009, background): “…of rodents, especially in New Zealand, there are few publications that describe the benefits, mainly because of the overwhelming task of measuring change at the ecosystem level (Donlan et al. 2003), especially for some very long-lived species that may take decades to respond (Towns et al. 2006).”
• Invasive rats on tropical islands: Their population biology and impacts on native species (2015, background): “Rats disrupt ecosystem function through predation of animals and plants, which causes direct or indirect cascades of collapse, through interruption of pollination, nutrient pathways, and seed predation, in some cases leading to forest collapse (Towns et al., 2006; Athens, 2009; Kaiser-Bunbury et al.”
• The impacts of rats on the endangered native flora of French Polynesia (Pacific Islands): drivers of plant extinction or coup de grâce species? (2009, background): “…severely depress seedling recruitment and thus alter vegetation composition, structure, and dynamics (Allen et al. 1994; Campbell and Atkinson 1999; Towns et al. 2006), we did not find any evidence in the field in French Polynesia or in the literature in other Indo-Pacific islands that rats are…”