00:00: Constructing Standard Invasion Curves from Herbarium Data—Toward Increased Predictability of Plant Invasions
Speaker: Dr. Pedro Antunes, Plant and Soil Ecology Lab Professor and Canada Research Chair, Department of Biology, Algoma University
Pedro Madeira Antunes is a Portuguese-Canadian biologist. He studies the intricate world beneath our feet, where soil, plants, and microbes interact, shaping communities and ecosystems. More specifically, he studies the life-supporting role of soil, exploring community-level interactions between plants and soil organisms, with an emphasis on mycorrhizal fungi, which act as conduits of nutrients to plants and carbon into the soil food web.
Constructing Standard Invasion Curves from Herbarium Data—Toward Increased Predictability of Plant Invasions
Prevention, early detection, rapid response, and prioritization are essential components of effective and cost-efficient invasive plant management. However, successfully implementing these strategies requires the ability to accurately predict the temporal and spatial dynamics of nonnative species. Why some nonnative plants become invasive and the source of variation in lag time between arrival and the onset of invasive expansion are poorly understood. At the same time, after species become invasive, predicting their susceptibility to pathogens capable of causing population declines is also poorly understood but relevant knowledge for management purposes. One tool to fill these knowledge gaps is the “invasion curve,” which tracks nonnative species abundance (i.e., area invaded) over time after arrival in a new area. Since invasive species curves rely primarily on records from herbarium collections, these collections can potentially be used as a springboard to develop a standardized approach to building invasion curves. This would allow researchers to compare the trajectories of nonnative species, improving risk assessment and our ability to recognize potential invasive species and factors contributing to both invasibility and invasiveness through time. While there have been admirable efforts to produce invasion curves, several barriers exist to their reliable production and standardization. In this talk, I will explore the challenges related to the efficient production of these curves for plants using herbarium data as well as and plant traits and pathogen accumulation data and suggest ways in which progress could occur. The hope is that this knowledge will better aid natural resource managers to prioritize needs, make effective management decisions, and develop targeted prevention and monitoring programs by taking advantage of predicted invasive species curves
18:40: Genomic Biosurveillance of Forest Invasive Species
Speaker: Dr. Richard Hamelin, Ph. D., Professor and Head, Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, Faculty of Forestry, The University of British Columbia
Dr. Richard Hamelin obtained a B. Sc. from McGill University (1982), a Master’s of Pest Management from Simon Fraser University (1986) and a Ph. D. from the University of Kentucky (1990). He works on pressing forest health issues such as invasive pathogens and pests and climate change. He has developed tools for pathogen detection and novel genomic approaches for pathogen surveillance. He has trained 60 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and research staff, published 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles and delivered more than 300 presentations around the world.
Genomic Biosurveillance of Forest Invasive Species
The world’s forests face unprecedented threats from invasive insects and pathogens that can cause large irreversible damage to the ecosystems. This threatens the capacity to provide long-term fibre supply and ecosystem services that range from carbon storage, nutrient cycling, water and air purification, soil preservation and maintenance of wildlife habitat. The key to reduce this threat is via vigilant biosurveillance to increase preparedness and facilitate early interventions. This requires collecting and sharing data that can be used to rapidly and accurately identify samples from various life stages of insects and pathogens and assign them to taxa and sources so that pathways of introduction can be discovered. Assessing the risk that is posed by alien species also requires a better understanding of the sources and pathways of introduction and of the traits underlying invasiveness. Genomics provides a toolbox that can address some of these challenges. The BioSAFE (BioSurveillance of Forest Alien Enemies) project developed tools and resources to improve identification of pests and pathogens, assign outbreak or survey samples to putative sources to identify pathways of spread. These next generation biosurveillance tools will improve our capacity to prevent and manage invasive species.