Talk:Invasive species

Dubious References - Favorable Effects
I took a very brief look at the Fred Pearce references regarding the advantages of invasive species. First of all, he's a journalist and not a scientist. Second of all, many of the references in this article to that book don't actually tie to any scientific literature (open up the book! uncited claims abound). In fact, there are numerous scholarly articles that complicate his claims (see, e.g.:

1) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stuart-Ludsin/publication/285891342_The_benthification_of_freshwater_lakes_exotic_mussels_turning_ecosystems_upside_down/links/568178e908aebccc4e0be133/The-benthification-of-freshwater-lakes-exotic-mussels-turning-ecosystems-upside-down.pdf -- "ecosystem engineering by these two nonindigenous species is changing the fundamental, physical nature of an entire category of ecosystems."

2) https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1126/ML112640036.pdf -- this seems to be the source of one of the claims "Since zebra mussels became established in Lake Erie, water clarity has increased from 6 inches to 30 feet in some areas" ... unfortunately, the very next sentence in this document says "Unfortunately, the material removed from the water consists of other live animals and algae that supply food for larval fish and other invertebrates. In response to this changing food supply, populations of some animals have begun to decline." -- this truncation of the quote seems particularly biased towards the "favorable effects" despite experts calling attention to the detriment.

3) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0380133004703718 -- "Since shortly after their introduction, dreissenid mussels have been thought to have improved water clarity in Lake Erie, particularly in the western basin. However, long-term monitoring (1982–2004) has found no evidence of persistent, basin-wide increases in water clarity in either the western or the central basin of Lake Erie since the Dreissena invasion.")

and that's just what I, an amateur, found with a very perfunctory googling.

Additionally, the second footnote linked to his book is a word-for-word copy/paste from his book: "But elsewhere, most of the time, the tens of thousands of introduced species usually either swiftly die out or settle down and become model eco-citizens, pollinating crops, spreading seeds, controlling predators, and providing food and habitat for native species. They rarely eliminate natives. Rather than reducing biodiversity, the novel new worlds that result are usually richer in species than what went before. Even the “terrorists” of the conservation world, such as zebra mussels and tamarisk, Japanese knotweed and water hyacinth, often have a good side we rarely hear about." (Note that there are no scientific sources noted in the text at this point. i'm also skeptical that we should have such large word-for-word copy/pastes from the book unless we specifically mention that is the case?). It also doesn't seem to be on the correct page listed in the citation.

Additionally, in a typical "journalistic" style, there are a lot of value-laden words and weasel words in his book and in this entire section that seem to me to be purely rhetoric and lack scientific substance (e.g. "model eco-citizens" (i think he made that phrase up) that "rarely eliminate natives" (lots of evidence to the contrary given how many people are researching this topic) that create "novel new worlds" which are "usually" (?) "richer" (by what & whose measure? is that "richness" better than "resilience" offered by native plants that are well adapted to environmental variations due to their thousands of years of evolution in a given space?) in species). If there are going to be claims contrary to the rest of the published scientific research in this article, I would at least expect them to be well supported. 24.131.137.118 (talk) 17:09, 16 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've removed the Pearce paragraph, for multiple reasons. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:43, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Alien species should not be synonymous with invasive species
So in the introduction, the article is labelled invasive or alien species, as if the two mean the same thing. How so? They're not synonymous (not always). Because many introduced/alien species are NOT invasive; the same way that many native species can be invasive as well. "Alien species" is more emblematic in the introduced species article, since introduced and alien species are the same thing. And also because alien species are introduced species that MAY or MAY NOT be invasive. But the introduction of this article is insinuating (or rather proposing) the idea that invasive species equals alien species and vice versa, when there are native species that are pretty invasive. 220.240.160.126 (talk) 13:08, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Gene drive
There's a segment on Gene drives as a solution to invasive species, identifying the pros and cons and such... But at no point does it actually explain what the heck a "gene drive" is. It doesn't even link to anything. Definition, please? 2601:408:C402:F09F:2135:A321:9AB0:39A9 (talk) 02:33, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * gene drive now Wikilinked. The section could be further improved with a concise, referenced description of what is meant be 'gene drive' genetic engineering. David notMD (talk) 10:01, 2 May 2024 (UTC)