The outright ability of a given invader to establish and grow in a new area may (as you mention) be locally dictated by abiotic conditions and / or the biotic resistance offered by the recipient community. However, propagule pressure contributes a great deal to invasion success; sometimes even the most robust and adaptable invaders can fail without a little help, often from us:

Colautti, Robert I., Igor A. Grigorovich, and Hugh J. MacIsaac. "Propagule pressure: a null model for biological invasions." Biological Invasions 8.5 (2006): 1023-1037.

Simberloff, Daniel. "The role of propagule pressure in biological invasions."Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 40 (2009): 81-102.

In the second paper Simberloff talks about how the variable invasion success of the zebra mussel can be linked to propagule pressure – probably a useful well-studied example of the kind you require. Of course, despite the accepted fact that more invasions fail than succeed, it might still be difficult to find as many published examples of elsewhere-successful invaders failing as publications on their successes. This paper has a table of examples for you:

Zenni, Rafael D., and Martin A. Nuñez. "The elephant in the room: the role of failed invasions in understanding invasion biology." Oikos 122.6 (2013): 801-815.

Also worth mentioning is that an immediate lack of numerical success can sometimes be a result of the well-documented lag-time where small populations are dealing with environmental stochasticity and Allee effects, so maybe those green crabs will do better in coming years:

Strayer, David L., et al. "Understanding the long-term effects of species invasions." Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21.11 (2006): 645-651.

Hope that helps!

Yes, the Indo-Pacific sp. Saurida undosquamis (lizardfish) settled in the Eastern Med, migrating through the Suez Canal and, after an year or two has become dominant (up to 30-40%) in trawling catches. It's abundance  fluctuated with that of hake Merluccius mediterraneus for a few decades, until further warming eliminated hake from the area, but brought in more species from the Red Sea, with the share of Saurida significantly diminishing.   See: Ben-Yami and Glaser,  1974. The invasion of Saurida undosquamis (Richardson) into the  Levant Basin - an example of biological effect of inter-oceanic       canals. Fish.Bull.(USA), 72 (2):359-373. 

You might also want to check out Hansen et al. (2013), which examines how often successful aquatic invasive species across a variety of taxonomic groups achieve high abundances.  That study compared abundance distributions from 17 invasive species with 104 native species from corresponding taxa.  One key finding of the study was that "abundance distributions of all species were highly right skewed, meaning both invasive and native species occurred at low densities in most locations where they were present." In other words, invasive species density distributions are not all that different from native species.  This finding goes against the common perception of invasive species, which may exist because areas where invasive species achieve high abundance and have high ecological costs tend to be the focus of research and management action.  

The study continues to provide ecological context for its findings.  For example,  "the proposed ecological mechanisms behind right-skewed abundance distributions, such as differences in niche suitability among sites, likely apply equally to species in both their native and introduced ranges." This echoes your/Daniel's statements about the effects of local abiotic or biotic conditions, although I agree with Daniel that propagule pressure is also an important consideration.  In any event, Hansen et al. (2013) should contain a number of examples you may find helpful, but will also provide a generalized argument citing ecological theory for why invasive species such as green crab may not achieve high abundances at all invaded locations.  

This open-access paper can be downloaded at the link below, or found on my ResearchGate page.  Best of luck to you. 

LINK

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077415#pone-0077415-g004 

CITATION

Hansen, GJA, and 13 co-authors. 2013. Commonly rare and rarely common: comparing population abundance of invasive and native species. PLoS ONE. 8:e77415. 

Thank you for your responses.  

Daniel, I have read those propagule papers and definitely appreciate the perspective of propagule pressure as a null model. I agree that it appears to be the only reliable predictor of success, all other things being equal.  It's too bad it so hard to come by data on actual propagule pressure in every case! Thank you for reminding me of the Zenni paper, it was on my list to read, and I think it will be very helpful. I appreciate that you bring up lag-times because I think it's one of the most under appreciated (though not unappreciated) threats of invasions, and one that's not getting a lot of stage time in recent discussions about invasives and conservation.  It will be interesting to see what happens with the Green crab here, thankfully there is still monitoring going on, even though they are, I believe, at very low levels, if they are still detectable at all.

Menakhem, that is an interesting case.  Is this species one that ultimately was less abundant than predicted, or has it pretty much replaced the hake?

Matthew, funny you mention that paper as I just came across it! I was noticing that although the shape parameters are similar between native and non-native abundance distributions, "Invasive species on average reached significantly higher densities than native species and exhibited significantly higher variance." So not necessarily qualitatively different, but certainly quantitatively different, which likely explains the visibility and impact.

My sense is that, when doing risk assessments (i.e., how likely is it that a given species will successfully invade a given place), most people use abiotic habitat characteristics (niche modeling etc), and probably some approximation of probability of transport (which is something of a proxy for propagule pressure), to generate the expected probability of invasion.  Even if these are informal risk assessments, there are still cases where there is an abiotic environment match, and the invader does show up, and can survive, but is numerically less abundant than predicted.  

Emily, everything is explained and illustrated in Ben-Yami & Glaser. It's certainly more complex that simply answering your question. If you ask me, prediction or not is not the right question; the "whats" and "hows" of the ecological dynamics of the process certainly is. I believe that you could find the 1974 journal in the archves of your univ's library.

Thank you for that, Menakhem!  I agree that the mechanisms of invasion are the real goal, and this was a nice read of thoroughly compiled data and observation on the history and likely dynamics of this invasion.  I am hoping, for this particular question, that by thinking about species that ultimately did not end up sticking around, to determine whether any generalizations can be made about the ecological dynamics of successful invasions. 

IMO and experience, any generalization is relevant only for a limited time and place. Would our science be able to predict the global demise of dynosaurs?  Or later, of the giant, hairy elephants? The start, duration, and end of the climatic change wave that culminated in the Little Ice Age? And its influence on major migrations and invasions of tribes and nations on one hand and the technological  development of humanity, on the other?

Predictions have been mostly wrong, and those soon forgotten. With all the modern science, we still don't know what's humans' role on the ecology of the climate change. It's apparently changing, but the dispute about our influence, if any, is still roaring.We can't even agree often about the ecological dynamics of the past... go now and predict!... 

Hi Emily,

I am not a macroalgae expert, but Sargassum muticum invaded the northern coast of Spain in the early 90's and took over all rock pools aggressively. Since about 2005 it has experienced a quite apparent retraction, just like many other fucoid macroalgae with a cold water affinity. There are quite a few papers published following the invasion, but I ignore whether there have been any papers published after the onset of retraction. Perhaps not the kind of situation you are looking for?

Thank you Jose,  yes I hadn't thought of it from a boom-bust perspective, but that might be a good angle on the question.  I will look into it.

My answer consists of a handy reference which you may or may not have already seen, apologies if it's the former!

Copp, G. (2007). When an “invasive” fish species fails to invade! Example of the topmouth gudgeon Pseudorasbora parva. Aquatic Invasions. doi:10.3391/ai.2007.2.2.4

Interesting, my students, colleagues and I have been using experiments and models to understand just such a case, where a known invasive thistle species globally (Cirsium vulgare) is not expanding its populations in the western tallgrass prairies of eastern Nebraska. We have tested the hypothesis that biotic resistance, especially from both pre-adapted insect herbivores moving over from a synchronously flowering native congener (Cirsium altissimum) (Louda and Rand 2002) as well as plant competition (Tenhumberg et al. 2012) reduce population growth significantly enough to explain this phenomenon. I list the relevant references in case you're interested.

----------------------

Louda, S. M. and T. A. Rand. 2002. Native thistles: Expendable or integral to ecosystem resistance to invasion? Pp. 5-15 in P. Kareiva and S. Levin, editors. The importance of species. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.      [Hypothesis of biotic resistance in this case]

Takahashi, M. 2006. Insect community composition in ecological resistance to invasiveness of bull thistle in eastern Nebraska. Thesis. University of Nebraska– Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.      [Documentation of the Insect community associated with both the native and the introduced thistle, including assessment of their significant overlap]

Andersen, C. P. and S. M. Louda. 2008. Abundance of and floral herbivory on Bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) in western tallgrass prairie. Proceedings, 20th North American Prairie Conference 20:33-50.      [Abundance of Cirsium vulgare, the introduced thistle, vs that of C. altissimum, the native congener in the western tallgrass prairies in eastern Nebraska]

Suwa, T., S. M. Louda and F. L. Russell. 2010. No interaction between competition and herbivory in limiting introduced Cirsium vulgare rosette growth and reproduction. Oecologia 162:91-102.      [Effects of competition and herbivory on growth of established rosettes of the introduced thistle]

Russell, F. L., K. A. Rose, and S. M. Louda. 2010.Seed availability and insect herbivory limit recruitment and adult density of native tall thistle. Ecology 91:3081-3093.      [Dynamics of the native thistle population]

Rose, K. E., F. L. Russell, and S. M. Louda. 2011. Integral projection model of insect herbivore effects on Cirsium altissimum populations along productivity gradients. Ecosphere 2(8):    [IPM model of effects of herbivory in relation to resources on population dynamics of the native species, C. altissimum]

Suwa, T. and S. M. Louda. 2012.Combined effects of plant competition and insect herbivory hinder invasiveness of an introduced thistle. Oecologia 169:467–476. [Effects of ambient competition and insect herbivory by native species on the recruitment and growth of the introduced thistle, C. vulgare]

Eckberg, J., B. Tenhumberg, and S. M. Louda. 2012. Insect herbivory and propagule pressure influence Cirsium vulgare: invasiveness across the landscape. Ecology 93(8):1787-94.      [Effects of herbivory and propagule pressure in limiting the invasiveness of C. vulgare]

Eckberg, J., B. Tenhumberg, and S. M. Louda. 2014. Native insect herbivory limits population growth rate of a nonnative thistle. Oecologia 174?:1-10     [IPM model analysis of the effects of insect herbivory on population dynamics of C. vulgare]

Tenhumberg, B, T. Suwa, A. Tyre, F. L. Russell, and S. M. Louda. 2014. Integral projection models show ambient competition and herbivory limit Cirsium vulgare more than its native congener. In review.  [IPM model analysis of the effects of competition and insect herbivory in the population dynamics of C. vulgare compared to their effects on the native C. altissimum.    

Populations of the Light Brown Apple Moth (Epiphyas postvittana) (native to Australia) in California have not increased quite as anticipated. Hopper and Mills have done some work on biotic factors that might explain why (maybe not published yet).

Hope this helps!

Well, in our case (see Reference) we had substantial 10-11 years fluctuations in the abundance of the invading lizardfish, interchanging with that of a native hake, with which it was sort of struggling over a niche. In fact, it was probably an effect of environmental, mainly thermal fluctuations. A post scriptum to the 40 years old paper is that the native hake disappeared, and the invading lizardfish was joined by more invading species, so that the composition of the present population of the demersal commercial fishes has totally changed, and the first invader hasn't "enjoyed" the disappearance of its native competitor, apparently, due to expansion of additioanal invaders. 

See: Ben-Yami, M. and T.Glaser.  The invasion of Saurida undosquamis (Richardson) into the Levant Basin - an example of biological effect of inter-oceanic         canals. Fish.Bull.(USA), 72 (2):359-373.1974.

You know, there are multiple papers and reviews that look at the "success" of invasive species, and the pattern appears to be that "failure" to colonize, grow and spread is much more common than "success" for non-native species introductions. So, I suspect that the initial question needs increased precision. The data suggested the generalization that 1% (- 10% max) become truly invasive of the 1% propagules that succeed in colonizing (i.e., surviving initial introduction). This may be an over-statement but observations still suggest that "non-invasion" is more common that invasive spread of introduced species, deliberate or not. It demonstrates the potential importance of propagule pressure; however, propagule pressure in our studies was less significant in explaining lack of invasiveness of Eurasian Cirsium vulgare (Bull or Spear thistle) in the central USA than were native insect herbivores, followed by plant competition early in the life cycle. See the following papers, and citations embedded, if interested.

Eckberg, J., B. Tenhumberg, and S. M. Louda. 2012. Insect herbivory and propagule pressure influence Cirsium vulgare: invasiveness across the landscape. Ecology 93(8):1787-94.      [Effects of insect herbivory followed by propagule pressure in limiting the invasiveness of C. vulgare]

Suwa, T. and S. M. Louda. 2012.Combined effects of plant competition and insect herbivory hinder invasiveness of an introduced thistle. Oecologia 169:467–476. [Shows effect of insect herbivory by native species and ambient plant competition on the recruitment and growth of the introduced thistle, C. vulgare]

Eckberg, J., B. Tenhumberg, and S. M. Louda. 2014. Native insect herbivory limits population growth rate of a nonnative thistle. Oecologia 174?:1-10     [IPM model analysis shows the effects of insect herbivory, followed by competition and then propagule pressure on the population dynamics of C. vulgare]

In the Canary Islands we have a good example with the bird Acridotheres tristis, which was breeding in the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (where I live) some years ago, and also in other sites of Tenerife, and was almost eradicated in the wild, thanks to a specific program developed by local authorities. See the attached file for more information.