Quantifying Threats to Imperiled Species in the United States

Wilcove, David S.; Rothstein, David E.; Dubow, Jason; Phillips, Ali; Losos, Elizabeth

doi:10.2307/1313420

Cited by 2,568 publications

(1,612 citation statements)

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“…Invasive species are regarded as among the top global threats to biodiversity, ecosystem resilience and adaptive capacity in the face of disturbance and global change (Vitousek et al 1997;Wilcove et al 1998;Olden et al 2004). Forests are among the best-studied and globally important terrestrial ecosystems, owing to their extensive distribution, social, economic and aesthetic value, importance to biodiversity, and for their essential role as regulators of hydrologic, energetic and elemental cycles affecting many of Earth's systems, including climate (Bonan 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subcontinental impacts of an invasive tree disease on forest structure and dynamics

et al. 2011

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Summary1. Introduced pests and pathogens are a major source of disturbance to ecosystems world-wide. The famous examples have produced dramatic reductions in host abundance, including virtual extirpation, but most introductions have more subtle impacts that are hard to quantify but are potentially at least as important due to the pathogens' effects on host reproduction, competitive ability and stress tolerance. A general outcome could be reduced host abundance with concomitant increases in the abundance of competitors. 2. Beech bark disease (BBD) is a widespread, fatal affliction of American beech (Fagus grandifolia), currently present in c. 50% of beech's distribution in eastern North America. Despite high adult mortality, beech remains a dominant component of the forest community. 3. Employing spatially extensive data from the national Forest Inventory and Analysis program of the United States Forest Service, we show that forests have changed dramatically in the presence of BBD. Within the 2.3 million km 2 range of beech, size-specific mortality was 65% higher in the longest-infected regions, and large beech ( >90 cm diameter at breast height) have declined from c. 79 individuals km )2 to being virtually absent. Small stem beech density was dramatically higher ( >350%) such that infested forests contain a roughly equivalent cross-sectional (basal) area of beech as before BBD. 4. There was no evidence for compensation by sugar maple or other co-occurring tree species via increased recruitment or adult survivorship at the landscape scale. Overall, community composition remained roughly unchanged as a result of BBD. 5. Surprisingly, trajectory of stand dynamics (shifts in stem density and mean tree size reflecting normal stand maturation (self-thinning) or retrogression (more abundant, smaller trees over time)) did not differ between affected and unaffected regions. Variance in stand dynamics was greater in afflicted forests, however, indicating that predictability of forest structure has been diminished by BBD. 6. Synthesis. Forests of eastern North America have shifted to increased density and dramatically smaller stature -without notable change in tree species composition -following the invasion of a novel forest disease. Our results reinforce the conclusion that introduced diseases alter fundamental properties of ecosystems, but indicate that the spectrum of potential effects is broader than generally appreciated.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subcontinental impacts of an invasive tree disease on forest structure and dynamics

et al. 2011

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“…Since its arrival it has been shown to negatively affect arthropods, molluscs, reptiles, birds, amphibians and mammals (Holway et al 2002). Invasive alien species were found to be the primary factor causing species extinction on isolated islands (Wilcove et al 1998). Human activities are considered as the major driver of biological invasions (Roy and Wajnberg 2008a;Leibhold et al 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting arthropod intraguild predation in the field

et al. 2011

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The process of biological control carries a distinct risk that an alien biological control agent (BCA) will become established as an invasive alien species with an associated threat to the local ecosystem biodiversity. It is imperative that a wide-ranging environmental risk assessment (ERA) is performed before the release of any BCA. This should include considering various potential but difficult to observe ecological interactions between the BCA and members of the native community, including disruption of intraguild relationships. Detection of intraguild predation (IGP) events involving predatory arthropods in the field can be done by analyzing their gut contents. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a sensitive and specific tool to identify target prey DNA within a predator's gut. This paper reviews the efficiency of a DNA based approach for detecting IGP in the field, compared with detection by the use of monoclonal antibodies or gas chromatography. Prey specificity, detection times after prey consumption, capacity for quantification, multiple prey targeting and the time and costs involved in developing and using the different methods are considered.

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“…Support for the theory that legislative conflict over wildlife preservation arises in these cases from dispersed economic benefits with concentrated costs comes from biological research (Flather and Knowles 1998;Wilcove, Rothstein et al 1998) and subsequent economic and public choice analyses (Cain and Kaiser 2003;Loomis and White 1996;Brown and Shogren 1998;Metrick and Weitzman 1998;Mehmood and Zhang 2001). A Congressional Representative's vote should reflect these tradeoffs as a function of self-interest; a representative's ideological beliefs and his community's role as electorate combine as the representative seeks to maintain his position.…”

Section: Historical Evolution Of Localized Values Reflected In Nationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Century of Environmental Legislation

Cain¹,

Kaiser²

2016

Research in Economic History

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. All rights reserved. No part of this WORKING PAPER may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of IME except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Terms of use: Documents in 1 A Century of Environmental LegislationLouis P. Cain * Brooks A. Kaiser † AbstractWe find three intertwined ambitions that drove federal legislation over wildlife and biodiversity at the beginning of the 20 th Century: establishment of multiple-use federal lands, the economic development of natural resources, and the maintenance of option values. We examine this federal intervention in natural resource use by analyzing roll-call votes over the past century. These votes involved decisions regarding public land that reallocated the returns to users by changing the asset's physical character or its usage rights. We suggest that long term consequences affecting current resource allocations arose from disparities between broadly dispersed benefits and locally concentrated socio-economic and geophysical (spatial) costs. We show that a primary intent of public land management has become to preserve multiple-use option values and identify important factors in computing those option values. We do this by demonstrating how the willingness to forego current benefits for future ones depends on the community's resource endowments. These endowments are defined not only in terms of users' current wealth accumulation but also from their expected ability to extract utility from natural resources over time.JEL Codes: N51, N52; Q28; Q23, Q24

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Quantifying Threats to Imperiled Species in the United States

Cited by 2,568 publications

References 15 publications

Subcontinental impacts of an invasive tree disease on forest structure and dynamics

Subcontinental impacts of an invasive tree disease on forest structure and dynamics

Detecting arthropod intraguild predation in the field

A Century of Environmental Legislation

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