Dark biodiversity helps solve Darwin's 160-year-old puzzle

Dark biodiversity helps solve Darwin's 160-year-old puzzle

An international research team, which included University of Tartu visiting doctoral student Wen-Gang Zhang and Professor of Botany Meelis Pärtel, has found a new solution to one of ecology's long-standing controversies—Darwin's naturalization conundrum, which addresses the question of why some species successfully establish in a new habitat while others do not. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Scie…

Swedish lakes help solve Darwin’s 160-year puzzle about invasive species

Darwin’s old puzzle starts with a simple question: when a species enters a new habitat, does it do better by fitting in or by standing apart? A study of fish introductions in Swedish lakes argues that the answer depends on the species missing from the community. Notably, it does not depend just on the ones already there. For more than 160 years, ecologists have wrestled with two conflicting ideas traced back to Charles Darwin. One says a newcome…