The Daily Bulletin Archive

Please join the Biology Department for the seminar "Is Resistance to Biological Invasion Futile in the World's Anthropogenic Ecosystems?" presented by Andrew MacDougall, associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph, on Tuesday, April 7, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Technology Building 160.

All faculty, staff, and students are welcome.

Seminar Abstract
Biotic resistance involves antagonistic species interactions regulating the establishment and spread of new species. Given that species invasions are increasingly recognized as a major threat to the resident diversity and ecosystem functioning of many of the world’s biological systems, biotic resistance has been predicted to play a potentially large role in regulating these changes. A fundamental challenge with resistance, however, is the difficulty in consistently demonstrating its importance. It is common to observe resistance in fine-scale experimentally constructed communities, but supporting evidence from field-based studies, at a range of spatial resolutions, varies widely sometimes within the same system. These uncertainties illustrate a wider debate on the functional significance of resident diversity and invasive species in contemporary landscapes. My talk will explore these issues, reviewing recent research on diversity maintenance and species invasions in an attempt to reframe the question from, Why does resistance often fail? to, What are the environmental situations, especially in human-influenced landscapes, where biotic resistance is most likely to be important?