List Of Working Groups

Hybridization can either facilitate biological invasions by increasing genetic diversity and adaptive potential, or constrain invasions through reduced fitness and sterility. This Working Group explores how hybridization shapes invasion dynamics across plants, insects, pathogens, and forest ecosystems, and evaluates its potential role in invasion management and biosecurity.

Many tree species grow faster outside their native range than in the ecosystems where they evolved. This Working Group explores how common this pattern is globally and which environmental and biological factors explain differences in tree growth between native and non-native regions.

This Working Group explores why some non-native species remain quiescent for long periods before becoming damaging, and why other species initially cause impacts before transitioning to quiescence. By synthesizing knowledge across taxa and regions, the group aims to improve understanding of dynamic invasion impacts in terrestrial ecosystems.

Considerable variation exists among different regions in numbers of established non-native species. For example, many more European forest insects have invaded North America than North American species have invaded Europe. Here we seek to understand the reasons for these and other types of variation in rates of forest insect invasions among these world regions.