Estimates of the cost of damage caused by invasive alien speices and the money spent addressing biological invasions are needed to guide policy and management. Here, we quantify the known monetary costs of biological invasions to South Africa, using data from the InvaCost database, literature searches, and stakeholders. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and agencies directly funded by them, provided mo...

Biological invasions pose a rapidly expanding threat to the persistence, functioning and service provisioning of ecosystems globally, and to socio‐economic interests. The stages of successful invasions are driven by the same mechanism that underlies adaptive changes across species in general—via natural selection on intraspecific variation in traits that influence survival and reproductive performance (i.e., fitness). Surprisi...

Globalization has led to the introduction of thousands of alien species worldwide. With growing impacts by invasive species, understanding the invasion process remains critical for predicting adverse effects and informing efficient management. Theoretically, invasion dynamics have been assumed to follow an “invasion curve” (S‐shaped curve of available area invaded over time), but this dynamic has lacked empirical testing using...

There is a scarcity of long-term groundwater hydrographs from sub-Saharan Africa to investigate groundwater sustainability, processes and controls. This paper presents an analysis of 21 hydrographs from semi-arid South Africa. Hydrographs from 1980 to 2000 were converted to standardised groundwater level indices and rationalised into four types (C1–C4) using hierarchical cluster analysis. Mean hydrographs for each type were cr...

The nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drug (NSAID) diclofenac is highly toxic to Gyps vultures, and its recent widespread use in South Asia caused catastrophic declines in at least 3 scavenging raptors. The manufacture of veterinary formulations of diclofenac has since been banned across the region with mixed success. However, at least 12 other NSAIDs are available for veterinary use in South Asia. Aceclofenac is one of these com...

Pre-harvest sprouting in spring wheat causes significant financial loss to growers throughout the world and sprouting damage can be reduced by growing resistant genotypes. Several genetic factors, especially those related to seed dormancy, are involved in the control of pre-harvest sprouting resistance. The objective of this study was to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) influencing pre-harvest sprouting resistance from m...

Invasive alien species are one of the primary threats to native biodiversity on islands worldwide. Consequently, eradicating invasive species from islands has become a mainstream conservation practice. Deciding which islands have the highest priority for eradication is of strategic importance to allocate limited resources to achieve maximum conservation benefit. Previous island prioritizations focused either on a narrow set of...

The taxonomic status of populations of rockhopper penguins ( Eudyptes chrysocome ) is still enigmatic. Northern populations differ from southern ones in breeding phenology, song characteristics and head ornaments used as mating signals. We conducted a molecular analysis using mitochondrial DNA sequencing to test if there is a gene flow barrier between northern (subtropical) populations and southern (subantarctic) populations i...

The rockhopper penguin ( Eudyptes chrysocome ) is a conspicuous apex marine predator that has experienced marked population declines throughout most of its circumpolar breeding distribution. The cause(s) for the declines remain elusive, but the relatively large spatio‐temporal scale over which population decreases have occurred implies that ecosystem‐scale, at‐sea factors are likely to be involved. We employ stable isotope ana...