A continent invaded

Abstract

book reviews ISSN 1948-6596 A continent invaded Invasion Biology and Ecological Theory: Insights from a Continent in Transformation. Herbert H. T. Prins & Iain J. Gordon (editors), 2014, Cambridge University Press. 540 pp. £65.00 (hardback) ISBN 9781107035812; http://www.cambridge.org/ There is little doubt that Invasion Biology has come of age. Look inside any volume of your fa- vourite ecological journal and you will find studies of the dynamics and impacts of alien and invasive species. Entire research laboratories focus their research specifically on mitigating the problems caused by invasive pests, weeds and pathogens. As well as preventing new invasions, there has always been considerable ecological insight gained from studying the behaviour of alien spe- cies in novel recipient communities and environ- ments. Australia has an illustrious (perhaps nefari- ous) history of biological invasions and (as any international visitor knows) now boasts one of the most enviable quarantine and biosecurity enforce- ment programs in the world. In this book, the editors return to the foun- dations of ecological theory and examine our cur- rent understanding of invasion biology through a series of 11 hypotheses (or insights). Together, these 11 hypotheses provide a reference to the fundamental ideas behind invasion biology as a discipline. In each of the empirical chapters the au- thors have been asked to evaluate the support for these hypotheses, from their own examples and perspectives. The book draws its examples una- shamedly, and exclusively, from Australia, and is divided into two discrete sections. The first section ‘Ancient invaders’ considers (mostly) the pre- human biotic invasion of Gondwanan Australia, while the second ‘Modern invaders’ deals with hu- man-mediated introductions. There is no obvious link developed between the two sections, other than that invasions (whatever their flavour) may be expected to share certain ecological commonalities. The editors claim that ‘The book is quite simply organised’. Yet, they have made little at- tempt to explain why we are reading about any of the particular species (or clades) included in the book, or to explain the order in which the chapters are grouped. The majority of the chapters are ter- restrial, with a great predominance of mammal and bird studies; from the diverse Meliphagid hon- eyeaters and endemic Australian parrots to Charadriiforme waders. Bird invasions have attract- ed considerable scientific research effort (Blackburn et al. 2009). Nevertheless, I was surprised by the large number and variety of avian examples includ- ed in the book, at the expense of many other taxa. Two particularly interesting chapters consider mi- gratory tendency in birds; an important trait linked to the success of natural colonisation, and the fail- ure of human-assisted translocations. Australia is popularly known for its marsupi- als, which arrived in the Australian part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana around 65 Mya and then underwent a spectacular evolution- ary radiation that led to seven orders and at least 31 families. Less well-known, I suspect, are the in- vasion histories of the murine rodents and ptero- podid bats, also included in this book. The single aquatic (marine mammal) example is the phyloge- ography of sirenians, and the invasion of the du- gong (Dugong dugon) into Northern (tropical) Aus- tralia at the transition of the Oligocene to the Mio- cene (about 25 Mya) following the arrival (invasion) of its tropical food source, seagrass. Plants are fur- ther considered through comparisons of the an- cient (and modern) invasion of species in the flow- ering Clade Mimosoideae, and a single chapter on the modern global invasions of Australian Eucalyp- tus, Acacia and Casuarina species, and Melaleuca quinquenervia, outside of Australia. Two chapters on Australia’s geological and climatic history provide a good reference to the tectonic movement and changing climates of Aus- tralia. I found it disappointing, however, that the definitions for these stages of invasion were framed (in one case) around Australia’s mammal fauna and not more generally across a broader set of flora and fauna. I was also unsure why these defining chapters were not placed before the frontiers of biogeography 7.2, 2015 — © 2015 the authors; journal compilation © 2015 The International Biogeography Society