I am part of the Weed and Invasive Plant Ecology and Management lab at Montana State University, and we are looking for papers that discuss whether or not to include the target species in analysis. It seems that if the impacts of the species on the rest of the community are of interest, one would exclude the species from the data set, however when considering biodiversity, should it be included?
Thank you for any input.
Hello Jordan; I study ant biodiversity in Southern California. At low elevations there are two invasive species, Linepithema humile and Solenopsis invicta that are both serious pests and are major impactors on the ant fauna where they occur. S. invicta's impact on ground-nesting birds in Texas has been well documented. Assessing ant diversity without recognizing those two species...and others... would seriously distort the analysis. In a few places the species can completely eliminate other ants. Here is one citation that might provide a review.
Lach, L. CL Parr and KL Abbott 2010. Ant Ecology. Oxford Univ Pr. 402 pp. See particularly chapter 15. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
I am tempted to believe that if you want to investigate the effect of a species over the native community, the species shouldn't count as a member of the species pool.
Anyhow, you should collect data on the presence of said invasive plant, abundance, presence, phytosociological data are some important information that could help your analysis.
You need to investigate the impact of the invasive plant on native flora, so you would not include it in biodiversity
It will depend somewhat on the context, but shouldn't matter if you're mindful.
i.e. Say, for example, you're looking at an invasive plant's impact on plant species richness. The invasive can have a positive, negative, or neutral impact on plant species richness.
If you include the invasive plant a net gain of one species would suggest it has had no impact on the native plant community, while a net zero impact would suggest it has impacted at least one native plant species, and replaced it at no cost to other species.
Alternatively, if you exclude the invasive plant species from your analyses, the same results would respectively correspond to net zero, or single species loss results.
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