Free Books: Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology - LEG/UFPR

Free Books: Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology - LEG/UFPR

The publication, in 1958, of Charles Elton’s book The ecology of invasions by animals and plants launched the systematic study of biological invasions. Invasion ecology has grown to become an important multi-disciplinary subfield of ecology with growing links to many other disciplines. This paper examines the citation history of Elton’s book using the Web of Science. We also examine Elton’s influence in shaping the current research agenda in invasion ecology, for which we use the 28 papers in a special issue of Diversity and Distributions (Volume 14: 2) as a representative sample. After 50 years, Elton’s book remains the most cited single source in the field (> 1500 citations), and is cited more often every year (> 100 times) than any other invasion-related publication, including influential papers in journals. Most citations to Elton’s book refer to particular topics/concepts covered in the book, rather than citing it as a general reference about invasions. The shift in the distribution of topics/concepts cited with reference to Elton over time follows the same trend as for biogeography and ecology in general (increasing emphasis on analytical studies, multi-scale analyses, multi-disciplinary studies, etc.).

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