Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- Weeds and the value of native species -- The socio-economic background of plant introductions -- Turning back the clock - is restoration possible? -- Biological control as an approach to introduced weeds -- Promoting ecosystem management for native species -- Conclusions -- 2 Planet of Weeds: exotic plants in the landscape -- The scope of the problem: how many and how costly are non-native plant species? -- What's in a name? -- Patterns of plant introductions -- The European invasion -- The ecological theory of colonization and invasion -- Landscape ecology and invasive species -- How do corridors affect the spread of introduced species? -- Landscape level patterns of invasion - the Lonsdale model -- Conclusions -- 3 Biological invasions in the context of plant communities -- Part 1 - Characteristics of native plant communities that influence plant invasions -- Disturbance and succession -- Grime's C-S-R model of succession -- Disturbance and the invasion of plant species -- Herbivory and introduced plant species -- Influences of generalist and specialist herbivores on community invasibility -- Resistance of invasive species to grazing -- Interspecific competition and plant invasion -- Are more diverse communities less vulnerable to invasion? -- Invasions and fluctuating resource availability -- The concept of 'niche opportunity' -- Ecological niche modeling -- Part 2 - The effects of invasive species on plant communities and ecosystems -- Effects of invasive plants on plant diversity -- Effects of introduced species on ecosystem functioning -- Invasive species and the soil -- Conclusions -- 4 Predicting invasiveness from life history characteristics -- What are life history traits? -- Vegetative reproduction.

Time to first reproduction -- Growth versus flowering -- Seed germination and dispersal -- Seed banks -- Disturbance and seed persistence -- Seed size and seed predation -- Vegetative reproduction -- Case study - Phragmites australis - a story of successful vegetative reproduction -- Do life history characteristics predict invasiveness? -- Predicting invasive species and the design of quarantine regulations -- Conclusions -- 5 Population ecology and introduced plants -- Why study plant populations? -- What determines plant population densities? -- Self-thinning and the 3/2 rule -- Are plants seed limited? -- Demographic parameters -- Monitoring populations -- Life tables and key factor analysis -- Population ecology of vegetatively reproducing plants -- Case study - Diffuse knapweed in British Columbia -- Conclusions -- 6 Introduced plant diseases -- Introduction -- Chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) -- Joint introductions - common barberry and wheat stem rust -- Sudden oak death and rhododendrons -- White pine blister rust, Cronartium ribicola -- Pandemics of Dutch elm disease, Ophiostoma ulmi and O. novo-ulmi -- Introduction of fungi for biological control of weeds -- Uromycladium tepperianum on Acacia saligna in South Africa -- Puccinia chondrillina on Chondrilla juncea in Australia -- The potential role of soil microbes in invasiveness -- Preventing the introductions of plant diseases -- Conclusions -- 7 Biological control of introduced plants -- Introduction -- How successful is biological control? -- Quantifying biological success -- Cost effectiveness -- Remembering success -- Can we predict successful agents and vulnerable plants? -- Are certain plant types more susceptible to biological control? -- Are certain plants more suitable for biological control? -- Can we predict what will be a successful biological control agent?.

How many agents are necessary for success? -- Selecting the right agent -- Are new associations of plants and insects more likely successful? -- Historical perspectives - using the past to predict the future -- Do seed predators make good biological control agents? -- Is biological control safe? -- Conclusions -- 8 Modeling invasive plants and their control -- Introduction -- The history of modeling biological control -- Modeling the impact of seed predators -- Another model of knapweed -- A hypothetical, stochastic model of seed limitation -- Models of Scotch broom -- Simulation and analytical model of native populations of broom -- Matrix models of introduced broom in North America -- Combining population models and experiments -- A model of biological control of Sida acuta in northern Australia -- A model of biological control of tansy ragwort control in Oregon -- The world is variable but models ar not -- Modeling invasive plants - what have we learned? -- Modeling invasions as they spread across habitats and landscapes -- The concept of 'nascent' foci -- What models tell us about detecting invasions -- Invasion speed for structured populations -- Slowing the spread -- Conclusions -- 9 Action against non-indigenous species -- Introduction -- The scale of the problem -- Manuals and advice -- Physical control methods -- Pulling and cutting -- Non-targeted physical control -- Chemical control of non-indigenous plant species -- Costs and benefits of control -- Assessing control of non-indigenous species -- Eradication as a goal -- Increasing the chances of successful control -- Who should take responsibility for introduced species? -- The uncertain status of some invasive species -- Conclusions -- 10 Genetically modified plants and final conclusions -- Genetically modified plants: another time bomb? -- Some concluding remarks.

Appendix - Some tools for studying plant populations -- Introduction -- Sampling methods -- Point sampling for measuring cover, basal area or percent sward -- Quadrat sampling -- Size and shape of sampling units -- The number of samples -- Distance methods or plotless samples -- The need for sampling - the need for measurement -- Measuring biodiversity in plant communities -- Species richness -- Evenness -- Heterogeneity -- Measures of species richness -- Rarefaction -- Measures of heterogeneity -- Simpson's index -- Shannon's index -- Measures of evenness -- Concluding comments of measuring diversity -- A picture is worth a thousand words - basics of GPS and GIS -- GPS -- Applications -- GIS -- Conclusions -- References -- Index.