CAN WE IDENTIFY INVASIVE SPECIES
BEFORE THEY INVADE?
Scientists uncover patterns that predict which insects
will harm North America’s conifers
North American forests are full of nonnative insects—more than 450 species, by the latest available count. Most have done no obvious damage, but the few that have—such as the emerald ash borer, which is killing off its namesake trees, and the hemlock woolly adelgid, which is devastating eastern hemlocks—have remade entire landscapes, doing untold ecological and economic harm. People have tried for decades to understand why some introduced insects become pernicious invasive species while others apparently remain innocuous, but these efforts have been mostly fruitless. Predicting which path an organism will follow “is the holy grail of invasion biology,” says forest entomologist Kamal Gandhi.
SOURCE: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-identify-invasive-species-before-they-invade/
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