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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2013

  • Title: Bullard Research: Invasion Dynamics and Impacts
  • Primary Author: Martha Hoopes (Mount Holyoke College)
  • Abstract:

    My research focuses on how species interactions vary across landscapes and through time, with an emphasis on invasion ecology and impacts on native biodiversity and community structure. I am particularly interested in understanding the transition from non-native to invasive with a focus on unexpectedly large impacts from non-native species that have not been identified as invasive. Although my primary empirical focus is on invasions in meadows embedded in a forest landscape, I have also pursued a number of general invasion projects while at Harvard Forest. (1) I have completed the second edition of a textbook on invasion dynamics (Invasion Ecology, Julie L. Lockwood, Martha F. Hoopes, and Michael P. Marchetti from Wiley-Blackwell), which is due out in June 2013. (2) Tony Ricciardi joined the book collaborators to review mechanistic hypotheses to explain the broad range of non-native impacts (Ricciardi et al. in press in Ecological Monographs). In more empirical explorations, (3) David Marsh, Karen Beard, and I completed a collaborative project on plant invasions in National Wildlife Refuges. The data were compiled in 2011 by our students and students and professors from six other institutions with support from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). Associations between refuge characteristics and invasive plants varied substantially among regions. The richness of invasive plants was associated positively with the richness of native plants in mainland refuges and negatively in island refuges. Non-native and invasive richness were both positively associated with colonization pressure. This work is currently in review in BioScience. This insight into invasion dynamics in refuges may be applicable to management at Harvard Forest and surrounding public land. (4) With Elizabeth Crone, I am exploring ways to use the Harvard Forest meadow and grassland habitats to help me disentangle the effects of historical land use, water availability, mowing regimes, propagule pressure, and the surrounding forest matrix on the dynamics of plant invasions in meadows embedded in forest habitats. I hope to set up plots in Harvard Forest to complement data I collected in wet and dry meadows with different management schemes in the Quabbin watershed in 2008. (5) Finally, a workshop on mixed effects and matrix models with Elizabeth Crone in the fall opened up new statistical approaches, which I am using this spring to analyze three accumulated datasets.

  • Research Category: Biodiversity Studies
    Conservation and Management
    Group Projects
    Invasive Plants, Pests & Pathogens
    Physiological Ecology, Population Dynamics, and Species Interactions