Nonnative Species And Invasive Species

Hurricane Sandy struck the northeast United States on October 29, 2012. It came in as a category one storm, bringing ninety per mile winds and a record surge of 13.88 feet into New York (Fitzpatrick 2012, Kantha 2013). These strong winds brought down various trees and caused destruction throughout the forests within the Northeast.
The State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase College is located within a county of New York in the Northeast. It is surrounded by deciduous forests inhabited by both native and nonnative species. A species is referred to as native if they are located where they naturally developed in. A species is categorized as nonnative when it is present in a location where it would not naturally have evolved in. The introduction of these would be made through human intervention. When a nonnative species begins to spread and generates negative effects to other species in the approximate location, they are known as an invasive species. A nonnative species is not necessarily an invasive species (Alpert, 2000).
There are no exact accepted characteristics of an invasive species however, there are qualities shared among them. These include the ability to grow fast, a tolerance to a wide array of habitats, dispersal of large numbers of small seeds, rapid germination periods, high resource productivity and the ability to compete with surrounding species. Invasive species are known to have a detrimental effect on the evolution of neighboring plant species within an ecosystem (Whitney and Gabler 2008, Webster et al. 2006). For an invasive species to become dominant it must be a greater competitor than the native species and have no predators in the environment (Thompson et al. 2009).
Purchase College has various forest e...

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...strus scandens (Dreyer et al, 1987).
Celastrus scandens L. is a native woody vein found in the eastern United States. A common name this species is the American bittersweet. C. scandens is native from Canada into the mid-west of the United States. C. scandens had an extensive population throughout this area before the introduction of the invasive species (Steward et al, 2003). C. orbiculatus has out-competed the native C. scandens and driven its population numbers down (Dreyer et al, 1987). There appear to be various reasons for this. C. orbiculatus is better competitor for limiting resources and has the ability to grow quicker. Both species are often confused with one another as they look similar however, there are characteristics that distinguish them. C. orbiculatus has broader shorter leaves while C. scandens leaves are longer and narrower (Steward et al, 2003).