EDI Staging Environment
Species introductions of anthropogenic origins are a major aspect of rapid ecological change globally. Research on biological invasions has generated literature on many different aspects of this phenomenon. This literature is enormous and has grown rapidly since the mid‐twentieth century. Therefore, we created this dataset in order to describe and categorize some aspects of this literature, to better understand what has been studied and what we know, mapping well‐studied areas and important gaps. To do so, we employed the techniques of systematic reviewing widely adopted in other scientific disciplines. We identified 2398 relevant studies in a field synopsis of the biological invasions literature. The purpose of the field synopsis was to map and categorize the scope of available information (and what is not known) from the literature addressing a fundamental understanding of biological invasions. We then examined 1537 papers in greater detail in a systematic review. The systematic review addressed the state of our knowledge about the mechanisms that permit species to invade novel environments. We carried this out by attempting to identify and characterize the literature, including what hypotheses have been tested, and what organisms and systems have been studied. A secondary goal of our work was to create a publicly accessible database of this literature for future research.
EDI is a collaboration between the University of New Mexico and the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Center for Limnology:
