I feel like invasive species would have a harder time living in a new area because they don’t know how to hunt/fight in the new area. I always hear how sensitive animals can be to changes in their environment too, so wouldn’t moving animals to a whole new environment mess them up? Why is this not the case?
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sometimes that does happen the way you described, and we don’t hear about those, because those species die out in their new environment.
but, the reverse is also true. the existing environment is used to doing things its way, including all the animals and plants in it. here comes this outside guy, maybe they don’t know what to make of it. so either predators are not sure they can eat it, or it grows faster than other plants, or it eats something that isn’t used to being hunted, or whatever, and it’s able to outcompete the native species.
that’s when we call it an invasive species.
Take a predator like the “murder hornet”
You have local species who evolved alongside them. The local honey bees know to swarm the invader and vibrate to increase its temperature and essentially cook it to death.
Now take that same hornet and bring it to America. The American bees never developed this survival tactic. And the hornet can kill the whole hive with impunity.
Not all species can survive other places. But the ones that can, and thrive, do so because the environment is less harsh or dangerous to them than where they were. And thus they breed like crazy and crowd out the original inhabitants.
As per your point, I believe rule of thumb is 1/10 and 1/10.
Out of ten organisms just picked up and plopped into a totally novel environment, only 1 in 10 would survive. The other 9 would lack food, or get eaten, or just be unable to survive in the environment at all because its too cold or hot or whatever.
*Of those* 1/10 will be come “invasive”, meaning they can not only survive, they thrive in the novel environment. So that math sucks for the organism but still, if 1 out of 100 introduced species become invasive that’s still a problem for habitats and that’s pretty much what we see. A shocking number of everyday organisms are non-native and invasive at this point pretty much everywhere. I have a bird feeder outside my window and I’d say only 1 in 10 birds I see there are actually native to the United States.
“Oh good, so relieved! I thought this was a discussion about non-assimilating immigrants in Europe running rampant on the local populace.”
What say we talk about zebra mollusks and kudzu!
They’re invasive. By definition the local environment they’re now in are ill equipped to deal with the never before seen species. They likely have something that local species can’t fight back against
Not every foreign species is invasive. What makes a species invasive is if there’s nothing to keep it in check, and it begins to out compete the native wildlife.
Almost all livestock is not native to the Americas, but yet it’s here and being kept in check.
Zebra mussels are not native to North America, but they are invasive because their natural predator is not there to keep their population down, so they can reproduce and eat the food that other things in the ecosystem need. We also can’t just introduce their predator, because it may find that other things in the ecosystem are easier to eat and just make the problem worse.
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