Reader Comments
Post a new comment on this article
Post Your Discussion Comment
Please follow our guidelines for comments and review our competing interests policy. Comments that do not conform to our guidelines will be promptly removed and the user account disabled. The following must be avoided:
- Remarks that could be interpreted as allegations of misconduct
- Unsupported assertions or statements
- Inflammatory or insulting language
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to flag this posting; we review flagged postings on a regular basis.
closeToo simplistic ?
Posted by Gopikrishnan on 25 Jan 2012 at 04:39 GMT
It appears to me that treating loss of native species and gain of exotic ones in arithemetic terms is too simplistic. Exotic species have not always been beneficial to the new area where they have invaded. For eg, the Parthenium weed in India which is an exotic introduction has overrun large tracts of land, and is proving difficult to destroy. Rather an impact analysis of native species lost versus exotic species introduced should have been considered.
RE: Too simplistic ?
erleellis replied to Gopikrishnan on 25 Jan 2012 at 14:28 GMT
Our model is quite simplistic, reflecting the state of global knowledge of anthropogenic changes in native and exotic plant species richness. We would have incorporated a model (or data) relating exotic invasions to native losses, but we searched for such a global model and there are none that we know of (if you are aware of one- please let us know!). This is not the only simplification- as we note in the paper, we also do not include climate-change-induced habitat shifts- and these may also be important, but are also not well documented for contemporary patterns, thought they have been applied to predict future changes.