Université de Fribourg

How well do we understand the impacts of alien species on ecosystem services? A pan-European, cross-taxa assessment

Vilà, Montserrat ; Basnou, Corina ; Pyšek, Petr ; Josefsson, Melanie ; Genovesi, Piero ; Gollasch, Stephan ; Nentwig, Wolfgang ; Olenin, Sergej ; Roques, Alain ; Roy, David ; Hulme, Philip E ; partners, DAISIE

In: Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2009///doi: 10.1890/080083

Recent comprehensive data provided through the DAISIE project (www.europe-aliens.org) have facilitated the development of the first pan-European assessment of the impacts of alien plants, vertebrates, and invertebrates – in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments – on ecosystem services. There are 1094 species with documented ecological impacts and 1347 with economic impacts. The two...

Université de Fribourg

Determinants of local ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) species richness and activity density across Europe

Kumschick, Sabrina ; Schmidt-Entling, Martin H. ; Bacher, Sven ; Hickler, Thomas ; Espadaler, Xavier ; Nentwig, Wolfgang

In: Ecological Entomology, 2009, vol. 34, no. 6, p. 748 - 754

1. Species richness is influenced by local habitat features and large-scale climatic gradients. Usually, both influences are studied in isolation because of the divergent spatial scales at which they occur. Here, we compared the influence of large-scale climate and local habitat type on European ants using a continent-wide, standardised sampling programme.2. We investigated species richness and...

Université de Fribourg

Body size–climate relationships of European spiders

Entling, Wiebke ; Schmidt-Entling, Martin H. ; Bacher, Sven ; Brandl, Roland ; Nentwig, Wolfgang

In: Journal of Biogeography, 2009///doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02216.x

Aim: Geographic body size patterns of mammals and birds can be partly understood under the framework of Bergmann's rule. Climatic influences on body size of invertebrates, however, appear highly variable and lack a comparable, generally applicable theoretical framework. We derived predictions for body size–climate relationships for spiders from the literature and tested them using three...

Université de Fribourg

Alien species in a warmer world: risks and opportunities

Walther, Gian-Reto ; Roques, Alain ; Hulme, Philip E. ; Sykes, Martin T. ; Pyšek, Petr ; Kühn, Ingolf ; Zobel, Martin ; Bacher, Sven ; Botta-Dukát, Zoltán ; Bugmann, Harald ; Czúcz, Bálint ; Dauber, Jens ; Hickler, Thomas ; Jarošík, Vojtěch ; Kenis, Marc ; Klotz, Stefan ; Minchin, Dan ; Moora, Mari ; Nentwig, Wolfgang ; Ott, Jürgen ; Panov, Vadim E. ; Reineking, Björn ; Robinet, Christelle ; Semenchenko, Vitaliy ; Solarz, Wojciech ; Thuiller, Wilfried ; Vilà, Montserrat ; Vohland, Katrin ; Settele, Josef

In: Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2009, vol. 24, no. 12, p. 686-693

Climate change and biological invasions are key processes affecting global biodiversity, yet their effects have usually been considered separately. Here, we emphasise that global warming has enabled alien species to expand into regions in which they previously could not survive and reproduce. Based on a review of climate-mediated biological invasions of plants, invertebrates, fishes and birds, we...