Accurate prediction of community assembly is a central goal in ecology but is challenging because assembly is governed by numerous mechanisms. Few theoretical models explicitly incorporate or test multiple mechanisms at once. We empirically tested the predictive performance of a plant community assembly model built using all possible combinations of four ‘mechanisms’ (soil resource competition, dispersal and colonisation, spat...

Surveys aimed at finding threatened and invasive species can be challenging due to individual rarity and low and variable individual detection rates. Detection rate in plant surveys typically varies due to differences among observers, among the individual plants being surveyed (targets), and across background environments. Interactions among these 3 components may occur but are rarely estimated due to limited replication and c...

Land managers decide how to allocate resources among multiple threats that can be addressed through multiple possible actions. Additionally, these actions vary in feasibility, effectiveness, and cost. We sought to provide a way to optimize resource allocation to address multiple threats when multiple management options are available, including mutually exclusive options. Formulating the decision as a combinatorial optimization...

Conserving biodiversity and combating ecological hazards require cost‐effective allocation of limited resources among potential management projects. Project priorities, however, can change over time as underlying social‐ecological systems progress, novel priorities emerge, and management capabilities evolve. Thus, reallocation of ongoing investments in response to shifting priorities could improve management outcomes and addre...

Detecting rare species is important for both threatened species management and invasive species eradication programs. Conservation scent dogs provide an olfactory survey tool that has advantages over traditional visual and auditory survey techniques for some cryptic species. From the literature, we identified 5 measures important in evaluating the use of scent dogs: precision, sensitivity, effort, cost, and comparison with oth...

Ecology Letters (2010) Abstract Environmental managers must decide how to invest available resources. Researchers have previously determined how to allocate conservation resources among regions, design nature reserves, allocate funding to species conservation programs, design biodiversity surveys and monitoring programs, manage species and invest in greenhouse gas mitigation schemes. However, these issues have not been address...

Invasive species surveillance has typically been targeted to where the species is most likely to occur. However, spatially varying environmental characteristics and land uses may affect more than just the probability of occurrence. Biodiversity or economic value, and the ease of detection and control are also likely to vary. We incorporate these factors into a detection and treatment model of a low‐density invader to determine...