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Introduced species are essentially "non-native" species. Invasive species are those introduced species that spread widely or quickly and cause harm, be that to the environment, [10] human health, other valued resources, or the economy. There have been calls from scientists to consider a species "invasive" only in terms of their spread and ...
An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. [2] Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions , causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage.
By understanding the qualitative and quantitative measures of a given invasive species probability to invade a given ecosystem, researchers can hypothesize which species will impact which environments. The addition, or removal, of a species from an ecosystem can cause drastic changes to environmental factors as well as the community's food web.
Some naturalised species, such as palms, can act as ecosystem engineers, by changing the habitat and creating new niches that can sometimes have positive effects on an ecosystem. Potential and/or perceived positive impacts of naturalised species are less studied than potential and/or perceived negative impacts. [12]
The atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen introduced the term "Anthropocene" in the mid-1970s. [21] The term is sometimes used in the context of pollution produced from human activity since the start of the Agricultural Revolution but also applies broadly to all major human impacts on the environment.
Nonnative species introduced onto islands can have profound effects on an island's ecosystem, more so than nonnative species introduced to continental land (Platenberg). The higher impact of introduced and nonnative species on islands is largely a result of lower biodiversity levels (Platenburg et al.).
An ecological cascade effect is a series of secondary extinctions that are triggered by the primary extinction of a key species in an ecosystem.Secondary extinctions are likely to occur when the threatened species are: dependent on a few specific food sources, mutualistic (dependent on the key species in some way), or forced to coexist with an invasive species that is introduced to the ecosystem.
Many ecosystems become degraded through human impacts, such as soil loss, air and water pollution, habitat fragmentation, water diversion, fire suppression, and introduced species and invasive species.