The Landscape Ecology of Invasive Spread

Abstract: Although habitat loss, fragmentation, and invasive species collectively pose the greatest threats to biodiversity, little theoretical or empirical research has addressed the effects of landscape structure—or spatial pattern more generally—on the spread of invasive species. Landscape ecology is the study of how spatial pattern affects ecological process. Thus, a landscape ecology of invasive spread involves understanding how spatial pattern, such as habitat fragmentation or resource distributions, affects the various stages of the invasion process. Landscape structure may affect the spread of invasive species and the invasibility of communities by (1) enhancing spread above some threshold level of…