About this Research Topic
Understanding how invasive species can rapidly infiltrate and establish in new areas is critically relevant for ecological management, pest control, climate change adaptation, and evolution. This is truly a global issue - with more than 26,000 of the world’s species now threatened, the world is facing a biodiversity crisis. Key to this crisis, invasive species constitute a major threat to native biota and primary industries globally and are one of the top five drivers of global change. Together with widespread pesticide application, climate change, and habitat loss and degradation, invasive species severely risk the integrity of local ecosystems and the critical services they provide.
Indeed, invasive species are almost always detrimental to native flora and fauna. By definition, they can out-compete natives in the race for resources; they can also introduce parasites and diseases, and cause immense environmental damage by consuming native species or their food sources. Often, the success of invasions relates to a life history trade-off for the invading organism. Free from predators (i.e., enemy release) or toxins in the new environment, the invasive species is able to limit costly investment in defense or abiotic tolerance traits and allocate more energy towards growth and reproduction. Though this represents the evolution of improved competitive ability, invasion is nevertheless often seen to be a fundamentally demographic process. However, for a species to become invasive, it must tolerate or adapt to the environmental and ecological characteristics of the invaded habit, in which it did not evolve and to which it may therefore be poorly adapted. Thus, the success of invasive populations is strongly underpinned by their ability to rapidly adapt. Genomic technologies now offer the possibility of trying to better understand the role of genetic mechanisms in the process of biological invasion.
Such mechanisms include hybridization between divergent species or populations, which can modulate the success of invasions through transfer of beneficial genes between locally-adapted and invasive species. In addition, a novel approach involves comparing the genomes of invasive and non-invasive populations of the same species to look for a ‘genetic signature of invasion’. By selecting the right study systems and leveraging advanced genomic technologies, we can begin to ask how ecological, environmental, and genomic factors interact to maximize invasive success.
This Research Topic will include research papers using genomic data to understand various aspects of biological invasion, as well as perspective and opinion papers.
Indeed, invasive species are almost always detrimental to native flora and fauna. By definition, they can out-compete natives in the race for resources; they can also introduce parasites and diseases, and cause immense environmental damage by consuming native species or their food sources. Often, the success of invasions relates to a life history trade-off for the invading organism. Free from predators (i.e., enemy release) or toxins in the new environment, the invasive species is able to limit costly investment in defense or abiotic tolerance traits and allocate more energy towards growth and reproduction. Though this represents the evolution of improved competitive ability, invasion is nevertheless often seen to be a fundamentally demographic process. However, for a species to become invasive, it must tolerate or adapt to the environmental and ecological characteristics of the invaded habit, in which it did not evolve and to which it may therefore be poorly adapted. Thus, the success of invasive populations is strongly underpinned by their ability to rapidly adapt. Genomic technologies now offer the possibility of trying to better understand the role of genetic mechanisms in the process of biological invasion.
Such mechanisms include hybridization between divergent species or populations, which can modulate the success of invasions through transfer of beneficial genes between locally-adapted and invasive species. In addition, a novel approach involves comparing the genomes of invasive and non-invasive populations of the same species to look for a ‘genetic signature of invasion’. By selecting the right study systems and leveraging advanced genomic technologies, we can begin to ask how ecological, environmental, and genomic factors interact to maximize invasive success.
This Research Topic will include research papers using genomic data to understand various aspects of biological invasion, as well as perspective and opinion papers.
Keywords: Invasive species, Genomics, Hybridization, Range expansion, Admixture, Biodiversity
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