Invasive species and global climate change.

Chapter 15 (Page no: 260)

Assessing and managing the impact of climate change on an invasive weed, yellow starthistle.

Assessing the geographic distribution and abundance of invasive species is critical for developing sound management and/or eradication policies. Ecological niche modeling approaches that make implicit assumptions about the biology and the effect of aggregate weather are commonly used to predict the potential distribution of invasive species based on their recorded distribution. An alternative approach is weather-driven physiologically based demographic modeling (PBDM), which explicitly incorporates the mathematical description of the observed biology, including trophic interactions, to predict the temporal phenology and dynamics of the species across wide geographic areas. The invasive weed yellow starthistle (YST) (Centaurea solstitialis; Asteraceae) and its interactions with annual grasses and herbivorous biological control agents are used to demonstrate the PBDM approach for analyzing complex invasive species problems. The PBDM predicts the distribution and relative abundance of YST across the western United States, and the results are used to assess climatic effects of temperature, rainfall, competition from grasses and the efficacy of biocontrol efforts including the introduction of a root-feeding weevil to control YST in North America. The model could also include direct effects of rising carbon dioxide levels on YST developmental biology.

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