1. What Is Meant by an Alien Species?

Name: ______Date: ______

ECOLOGY Scientific Frontiers: Alien Invasion

1. What is meant by an “alien” species?

2. What advantages do alien species have over native species?

3. Name two examples of alien species.

The Silence of the Birds 4. What effect has the brown tree snake had on the Guam ecosystem?

5. In Guam, there are ______brown tree snakes per acre.

6. Why does the zoo keep only male brown snakes?

7. What are scientists hoping to use to remove the snakes from Guam?

8. Why do scientists think that the virus will be safe to use?

9. What is a biological control?

10. What is a potential risk of using the virus?

Green Invader 11. How has Caulerpa toxifolia hurt the town’s economy?

12. Why does Caulerpa secrete the white fluid? 13. How fast does a Caulerpa patch spread?

14. How did Caulerpa most likely get introduced to the Mediterranean.? 15. How many species are normally found in the natural Mediterranean community?

16. What biological control are they hoping to use against Caulerpa?

17. What do the slugs do with the Caulerpa toxin?

18. Why do scientists believe that the slugs will be safe to release into the Mediterranean?

19. Other than the Mediterranean, where else has Caulerpa spread?

Silken Tree Eaters 20. How did the Asian longhorn beetle enter North America?

21. What does the beetle do?

22. What was once the dominant plant in the northeastern US? What happened to it?

23. What plant replaced the chestnut? What happened to it?

24. What tree is now becoming dominant?

25. Why were gypsy moths first introduced into the US?

26. What is a pheromone?

27. What is a potential risk in using regular insecticides on the gypsy moths? 28. Comsileura flies are an alien predator introduced in order to stop the spread of the Gypsy moths. What went wrong? 29. Why is the virus better than the Comsileuraflies?

30. What is a drawback to the virus?

Dust Busting 31. What does the “white plague” infect?

32. How can you identify the sea fans that have been infected?

33. What specifically is the purple color on the sea fan?

34. What kind of organism causes the disease?

35. How did Aspergillus get into the oceans?

36. What human disease do the scientists think may be increasing as a result of the African dust?