Bilogical Invasions by Mark Williamson

Different from Feral Future, Williamson's book is written for professionals. So I read it at daytime when my brain functioned properly. It is a thinner book (single-spaced though) but it took me a lot longer to finish. A colleague of mine recommended this book because "it was a classic."

Written in 1996, the book offered a framework for the study of invasions. Table 1.1 ("Heart of the book", to use the author's words, on page 3) pretty much summarized the whole book, where 11 points arranged in four sets characterized by different stages of invasions (Set A, arrival and establishment; Set B, spread; Set C, Equilibrium and effects; and Set D, implications). Each of the 11 points could be a bottom-line from a meta-analysis paper. For instance, points one says "most invasions fail, only a limited number of taxa succeed (tens rule) ."

My colleague was absolutely right. The book is classical in the sense that it puts our knowledge in bits and pieces into a coherent and systematic matter. It is well known that information in biological invasion has been mostly anecdotal, so for me it is almost soothing to know there are some general conclusions ecologists felt comfortable to draw (as summarized by the 11 points). Though mostly very over-arching, these points offered a good start for people new in the bioinvasion arena like myself.

In fact Williamson mentioned the book was derived from his lecture he gave at the University of York for third-year undergrads. So it is not surprising that the book offered an analytical framework supplemented by heaps of case studies. A nice surprise for me though was that the author also managed to be stimulating throughout the book. Often he would say something like "we know a, but what we don't know b, c, and d. My hypothesis is H but let's wait and see..."

One example that particularly interested me was his observation on most of invasion research, modeling efforts included, often ignored cascading effects in ecosystems (which is exactly the information we need to study the social economic impacts of invasions!). Another nice surprise was he also mentioned that invasion was always involved conflicts of interest (page 124), which I didn't expect from a "classical" ecology textbook.

Perhaps a classical ecologist who studied population for most of his life would not draw much evidence from genetic and evolutionary research either. But Williamson did it seamlessly.

The only regret I have towards the book is there has not a recent update (Williamson was appointed professor emeritus in 1993, three years before the book published, according to Wiki). I wonder how many of his 11 general points have changed in the past 10 years. For that reason the book I am currently reading is another textbook published in 2007.

Stay tuned.