Some invasive species targeted for total eradication bounce back with a vengeance, especially in aquatic systems, finds a study led by the University of California, Davis.
Under the unseasonably warm June sun with the Seattle Space Needle as our reference point, Dr. Jamey Selleck and I don our thick wetsuits. The air may be warm, but the water is still frigid. Our small boat bobs in the water as our captain, Brian Allen, scans our surroundings.
“Nothing.” He remarks with resignation.
We sigh, finish connecting our hoses and checking our gauges, then plunge into the icy water.
Much of the Grosholz Lab's recent work over the last several years has involved measuring the community and ecosystem impacts of the invasive salt marsh cordgrass Spartina on a broad range of organisms from primary producers to shorebirds in San Francisco Bay. This has been a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation (CNH Coupled Natural and Human Systems).
The Bodega Marine Laboratory non-indigenous/pathogen facility and effluent treatment system was established in 2014 and supports non-indigenous and invasive species research. The facility enables scientists and students the ability to investigate introduced/invasive species as well as pathogens that are the basis for emerging diseases and changing biodiversity.
For more information about these facilities, please contact BML.
Increasingly, Ted Grosholz's research is addressing the interaction between climate change and biological invasions. As the result of participation in an NCEAS (National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis) working group on climate change and invasive species, he has continued his collaborative work on synthetic analyses of climate change impacts on the invasion process that began with participation in an NCEAS working group on climate change and invasive species.
Marine invasive species are species introduced by human activities to new habitats where the species are not native. Marine invasive species are causing more and more costly economic problems, such as fouling the hulls of boats, which slows the vessels and increases the fuel costs. BML researchers continue to be among the top in the field of marine invasive species.
Biodiversity is, simply, the variety of life on Earth, and can be characterized at various levels from genes, to species and ecosystems. Understanding the causes of patterns of the diversity of life on Earth and the functional consequences of natural and human-caused variation in that diversity are fundamental goals of ecology and a focus of active research at BML. These studies are all the more pressing given the impact that human activities have on biodiversity.
