0000000000556032
AUTHOR
David L. Strayer
Research priorities for freshwater mussel conservation assessment
Freshwater mussels are declining globally, and effective conservation requires prioritizing research and actions to identify and mitigate threats impacting mussel species. Conservation priorities vary widely, ranging from preventing imminent extinction to maintaining abundant populations. Here, we develop a portfolio of priority research topics for freshwater mussel conservation assessment. To address these topics, we group research priorities into two categories: intrinsic or extrinsic factors. Intrinsic factors are indicators of organismal or population status, while extrinsic factors encompass environmental variables and threats. An understanding of intrinsic factors is useful in monitor…
Understanding the long-term effects of species invasions
We describe here the ecological and evolutionary processes that modulate the effects of invasive species over time, and argue that such processes are so widespread and important that ecologists should adopt a long-term perspective on the effects of invasive species. These processes (including evolution, shifts in species composition, accumulation of materials and interactions with abiotic variables) can increase, decrease, or qualitatively change the impacts of an invader through time. However, most studies of the effects of invasive species have been brief and lack a temporal context; 40% of recent studies did not even state the amount of time that had passed since the invasion. Ecologists…