What are non-native species and how do they impact biodivesity?

Answer 1

I'm no expert, but.......animal & plant life adapt in certain areas of the globe. When you introduce a foreign species to the area they can & do destroy the ability of plants & animals to survive.

If a foreign species is introduced, it may not have natural preditors which gives it an advantage over the native species. It competes for the natives food & resources and can have a detrimental effect on it. This is part of the reason why it is against the law to bring plant & animal products across many borders.

Answer 2

The best two examples are dogs and rabbits. You may have heard of the dodo bird. It was flightless and big and only existed on a handful of islands in the Caribbean. When sailors started visiting those islands, they brought dogs. The dogs killed the birds AND ate the eggs. The sailors did, too. The birds were not adapted to such predators. Within two hundred years of the islands being discovered, the dodos were gone.

The other nightmare story is rabbits. Someone imported rabbits to Australia to breed them for meat and fur. It didn't take long for some rabbits to escape. There was no native predator that recognized the rabbits as prey so they bred and bred and bred until Australia was over run with them. They had to bring in non-native predators just for the rabbits and they've had rabbit drives in which thousands of rabbits were killed and it still didn't make a dent in the population. The rabbits eat native grasses and seeds that the native animals depend on. Some of those species came very close to extinction because of the rabbit.

Answer 3

Non native species are those not found somewhere naturally, but are brought in from elsewhere- sometimes on purpose (transplantation)and sometimes accidentally (mixed in with something else being brought in or on the transport bringing other things in).
They can have a positive impact if all interactions have been accounted for (grape vines for instance transplanted from europe to california) or can throw the natural balance into chaos (look at the vine plant brought in to the southern states- kudzu-that had no natural enemies and practically took over. It was supposed to be a cure for a problem but instead became the problem)

Answer 4

The clue is in the question, it is a species that has been introduced to an area where it is not naturally found. In the UK, for example; grey squirrels, Canada geese and signal crayfish from North America. Chinese Box crabs, Japanese knotweed from Asia! Sycamores from Europe.

Non natives do not tend to bring their predators with them, but they often bring their diseases and parasites, to which native species have no resistance.