Tag Archives: cost

Investigating the Financial Costs of Invasive Species

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Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom (2021) Cuthbert et al., NeoBiota, https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.67.59743

The Crux

I write near constantly about non-native species on Ecology for the Masses, but I mainly focus on the negative impacts that many of them have on native ecosystems. Yet often if we want to really kick off initiatives to manage invasive non-native species, we need to point out the financial burden that many of them bring.

Yet obtaining a simple monetary estimate for invasive species is not easy. A few particularly notorious invasives tend to take up a lot of research focus, which mean that there are many species out there for which our cost estimates could be unreliable. Likewise, we’re likely to have a better picture of the impact of non-native species which have been established longer than ones who have just arrived, and haven’t been sufficiently studied or haven’t spread far enough to have had a measurable impact.

But non-native species aren’t slowing down in their spread anytime soon, so it’s important to figure out what the costs of invasive non-native have been and will be, as well as where there are holes in our knowledge that need to be filled. That’s what today’s study set out to do, by looking at invasive species in the United Kingdom.

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Donald Hobern: Cataloguing the Planet’s DNA

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I spoke with GBIF’s executive secretary and amateur lepidopterist Donald Hobern about how DNA barcoding fits into modern conservation and ecology (Image Credit: Donald Hobern, CC BY-2.0, Image Cropped)

DNA barcoding has revolutionised science. Ask anyone working in evolution or taxonomy these days what the biggest changes are the they’ve seen in their discipline, chances are it’ll be to do with gene sequencing and DNA processing. So when the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) Conference came to Trondheim last week, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the behind the scenes work that goes into cataloguing the DNA barcodes of life on earth.

I sat down with Donald Hobern, Executive Secretary of iBOL and former Executive Secretary of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Director of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). Donald joined iBOL just as they launched BIOSCAN, a $180 million dollar program which aims to accelerate the cataloguing of the world’s biodiversity in DNA form. We spoke about BIOSCAN, the technology behind bringing occurrence and genetic data together, and how the work iBOL and GBIF do ties into the bigger picture of global conservation and sustainability.

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When the Growing Gets Hot

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Growth is a critical aspect of life for all organisms, and understanding what can and cannot affect it allows us to predict what effect climate change may have on organisms like these zebrafish (Image Credit: Lynn Ketchum, CC BY-SA 2.0).

Warming increases the cost of growth in a model vertebrate (2019) Barneche et al., Functional Ecology, https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13348

The Crux

In ecology, how organisms grow is relevant across all levels of life. Growing faster than others can be selected for as an evolutionary advantage, if being bigger earlier means that you have a competitive advantage over other members of your species.

Because growth is so critical to life, it is important to understand what may affect the ability of an organism to grow. The only way an organism can grow is by converting energy it acquires from food to its own body mass, but outside influences, like temperature, can affect how efficient an organism is at this energy conversion. The authors of today’s paper wanted to investigate if this efficiency and the cost of growth itself changed across a range of projected temperatures.
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