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?
In: 5
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.
Latest Answers