Linking economic activities to the distribution of exotic plants

The human enterprise is flooding Earth's ecosystems with exotic species. Human population size is often correlated with species introductions, whereas more proximate mechanisms, such as economic activities, are frequently overlooked. Here we present a hypothesis that links ecology and economics...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2004-12, Vol.101 (51), p.17725-17730
Main Authors: Taylor, B.W, Irwin, R.E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological Sciences
Ecological economics
ecological invasion
Ecological modeling
economic analysis
Economic models
Ecosystem
Endangered & extinct species
Environmental economics
Environmental impact
Flowers & plants
Human ecology
Human influences
Human populations
Introduced species
land use change
Modeling
Models, Economic
Nonnative species
Plant Development
plant ecology
Plants
Population
Population Dynamics
Population ecology
real estate assets
Real estate economics
real estate gross state product
weeds
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Summary:The human enterprise is flooding Earth's ecosystems with exotic species. Human population size is often correlated with species introductions, whereas more proximate mechanisms, such as economic activities, are frequently overlooked. Here we present a hypothesis that links ecology and economics to provide a causal framework for the distribution of exotic plants in the United States. We test two competing hypotheses (the population-only and population-economic models) using a national data set of exotic plants, employing a statistical framework to simultaneously model direct and indirect effects of human population and ecological and economic variables. The population-only model included direct effects of human population and ecological factors as predictors of exotics. In contrast, the population-economic model included the direct effects of economic and ecological factors and the indirect effects of human population as predictors of exotics. The explicit addition of economic activity in the population-economic model provided a better explanation for the distribution of exotics than did the population-only model. The population-economic model explained 75% of the variation in the number of exotic plants in the 50 states and provided a good description of the observed number of exotic plants in the Canadian provinces and in other nations in 85% of the cases. A specific economic activity, real estate gross state product, had the strongest positive effect on the number of exotics. The strong influence of economics on exotics demonstrates that economics matter for resolving the exotic-species problem because the underlying causes, and some of the solutions, may lie in human-economic behaviors.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0405176101