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Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant
Invasive species threaten biodiversity and incur costs exceeding billions of US$. Eradication efforts, however, are nearly always unsuccessful. Throughout much of North America, land managers have used expensive, and ultimately ineffective, techniques to combat invasive Phragmites australis in marsh...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178463/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25276502 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.567 |
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author | Silliman, Brian R. Mozdzer, Thomas Angelini, Christine Brundage, Jennifer E. Esselink, Peter Bakker, Jan P. Gedan, Keryn B. van de Koppel, Johan Baldwin, Andrew H. |
author_facet | Silliman, Brian R. Mozdzer, Thomas Angelini, Christine Brundage, Jennifer E. Esselink, Peter Bakker, Jan P. Gedan, Keryn B. van de Koppel, Johan Baldwin, Andrew H. |
author_sort | Silliman, Brian R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Invasive species threaten biodiversity and incur costs exceeding billions of US$. Eradication efforts, however, are nearly always unsuccessful. Throughout much of North America, land managers have used expensive, and ultimately ineffective, techniques to combat invasive Phragmites australis in marshes. Here, we reveal that Phragmites may potentially be controlled by employing an affordable measure from its native European range: livestock grazing. Experimental field tests demonstrate that rotational goat grazing (where goats have no choice but to graze Phragmites) can reduce Phragmites cover from 100 to 20% and that cows and horses also readily consume this plant. These results, combined with the fact that Europeans have suppressed Phragmites through seasonal livestock grazing for 6,000 years, suggest Phragmites management can shift to include more economical and effective top-down control strategies. More generally, these findings support an emerging paradigm shift in conservation from high-cost eradication to economically sustainable control of dominant invasive species. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4178463 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-41784632014-09-30 Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant Silliman, Brian R. Mozdzer, Thomas Angelini, Christine Brundage, Jennifer E. Esselink, Peter Bakker, Jan P. Gedan, Keryn B. van de Koppel, Johan Baldwin, Andrew H. PeerJ Ecology Invasive species threaten biodiversity and incur costs exceeding billions of US$. Eradication efforts, however, are nearly always unsuccessful. Throughout much of North America, land managers have used expensive, and ultimately ineffective, techniques to combat invasive Phragmites australis in marshes. Here, we reveal that Phragmites may potentially be controlled by employing an affordable measure from its native European range: livestock grazing. Experimental field tests demonstrate that rotational goat grazing (where goats have no choice but to graze Phragmites) can reduce Phragmites cover from 100 to 20% and that cows and horses also readily consume this plant. These results, combined with the fact that Europeans have suppressed Phragmites through seasonal livestock grazing for 6,000 years, suggest Phragmites management can shift to include more economical and effective top-down control strategies. More generally, these findings support an emerging paradigm shift in conservation from high-cost eradication to economically sustainable control of dominant invasive species. PeerJ Inc. 2014-09-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4178463/ /pubmed/25276502 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.567 Text en © 2014 Silliman et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Ecology Silliman, Brian R. Mozdzer, Thomas Angelini, Christine Brundage, Jennifer E. Esselink, Peter Bakker, Jan P. Gedan, Keryn B. van de Koppel, Johan Baldwin, Andrew H. Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant |
title | Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant |
title_full | Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant |
title_fullStr | Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant |
title_full_unstemmed | Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant |
title_short | Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant |
title_sort | livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant |
topic | Ecology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178463/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25276502 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.567 |
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