Avian Invasions: The Ecology and Evolution of Exotic Birds

Biological invaders represent one of the primary threats to the maintenance of global biodiversity, human health, and the success of human economic enterprises. The continuing globalization of our society ensures that the need to understand the process of biological invasion will only increase in the future. There is also a growing recognition that the study of biological invaders provides a unique insight into basic questions in ecology and evolution.

The study of exotic birds has had a particularly long history and has come to represent a fascinating intersection between the study of biological invasions, avian conservation biology, and basic principles of ecology and evolution. Avian Invasions summarizes and synthesizes this unique historical record and unravels the insights that the study of exotic birds brings to all three of these research strands. It includes chapters on the well-known contributions of exotic bird study to ecological science, and on the post-establishment evolution of introduced bird populations. The result is the most comprehensive picture yet of the invasion process.

Avian Invasions is aimed at professional avian biologists and ornithologists as well as graduate students of avian ecology, evolution and conservation. It also appeals to a more general audience of invasion ecologists.

Tim Blackburn is Head of the Institute of Zoology, the research division of the Zoological Society of London. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford and an Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham. His research primary research interests concern invasion biology, macroecology, and extinction.

Julie Lockwood is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University. Her interests are in the ecology and evolution of biological invaders, and the conservation of threatened birds.

Phillip Cassey is a research fellow in Systems Ecology at the University of Birmingham. He is primarily interested in the application of realistic statistical models for understanding ecological processes; particularly of extinction and invasion among birds.