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Invasion success: does size really matter?
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Invasion success: does size really matter?

A.W. Miller, C.L. Hewitt and G.M. Ruiz
Ecology Letters, Vol.5(2), pp.159-162
2002
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Abstract

The recent paper by 16 presents a compelling relationship between range limit shifts, climatic fluctuations, and body size for marine bivalves in the fossil record. However, their extension of body size as a correlate for contemporary marine bivalve introductions is problematic and requires further scrutiny. Unlike their analysis of the fossil assemblage, the approach used for contemporary invasions does not adequately control for dispersal mechanism (vector) or source region. First, their analysis included mariculture species, intentionally introduced because of their large size, creating a vector-specific bias. Second, successful invaders from multiple source regions (Northern Hemisphere) were compared with potential invaders from a single source region (north-eastern Pacific), leaving both source and vector as uncontrolled variables. We present an analysis of body size for bivalve introductions from a single vector and source region, indicating no correlation between body size and invasion success when eliminating intentional introduction, source region and transport vector as confounding factors.

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#13 Climate Action
#14 Life Below Water
#15 Life on Land

Source: InCites

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Citation topics
3 Agriculture, Environment & Ecology
3.2 Marine Biology
3.2.509 Marine Algae
Web Of Science research areas
Ecology
ESI research areas
Environment/Ecology
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