Understanding how reclamation practices influence plant community assembly and succession is an important step in developing realistic indicators and targets for reclamation of oil sands mine sites to upland forest ecosystems. We currently have a poor understanding of factors affecting plant community assembly and succession in reclaimed oil sands sites. Through synthesis of research completed over the last 24 years, we identify four key findings: (i) use of surface soil and forest floor material salvaged from mined areas increases plant species cover, richness, and diversity relative to the use of various other cover soil materials (such as clay subsoil); (ii) stockpiling of salvaged surface soils decreases the abundance of native plant propagules and delays early vegetation community development; (iii) differences in plant community composition between reclaimed and adjacent mature forests remain two decades after placing cover soils; however, differences are smaller with use of forest floor–mineral mix than peat–mineral mix; and (iv) plant community assembly is in progress but communities remain different to those found in natural undisturbed conditions. Our review identified critical knowledge gaps for further research to improve understanding of: (i) long-term (60 to 100 years) plant community composition in reclaimed oil sands sites; (ii) how residual forest patches near disturbed oil sands sites act as seed and propagule sources in newly reclaimed sites; (iii) plant community assembly processes in reclamation sites; (iv) the effect of micro-topographic heterogeneity on plant community development; and (v) how soil nutrient availability in different substrates influences plant community development over the long term. Ongoing support for selected existing studies and establishment of new studies focusing on plant community development through long-term monitoring are highly recommended.

Intraguild predation (IGP), the interaction between species that eat each other and compete for shared resources, is ubiquitous in nature. We document its occurrence across a wide range of taxonomic groups and ecosystems with particular reference to non-indigenous species and agricultural pests. The consequences of IGP are complex and difficult to interpret. The purpose of this paper is to provide a modelling framework for the analysis of IGP in a spatial context. We start by considering a spatially homogeneous system and find the conditions for predator and prey to exclude each other, to coexist and for alternative stable states. Management alternatives for the control of invasive or pest species through IGP are presented for the spatially homogeneous system. We extend the model to include movement of predator and prey. In this spatial context, it is possible to switch between alternative stable steady states through local perturbations that give rise to travelling waves of extinction or control. The direction of the travelling wave depends on the details of the nonlinear intraguild interactions, but can be calculated explicitly. This spatial phenomenon suggests means by which invasions succeed or fail, and yields new methods for spatial biological control. Freshwater case studies are used to illustrate the outcomes.

We formalize the establishment process for a sexual, semelparous organism through the use of hierarchical probability modeling from parameters of survival, probability of being female, probability of being fertilized, and expected fecundity. We show how to calculate the expected per capita growth rate and probability of extinction. An Allee effect is observed if the expected population growth rate decreases as the initial population size decreases. The model can be further extended as a stochastic process to evaluate the probability of extinction in subsequent generations. One of the novel results is the formulation of an analytical probability distribution for the next generation population size. As case studies, we use the Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) and the apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata), both of which appear on the World Conservation Union's list of 100 worst invaders. We evaluate the strength of the Allee effect and conclude that apple snails experience a weak Allee effect and Chinese mitten crabs experience a strong Allee effect. We emphasize one scenario where the stochastic process reveals that invasion risk can be estimated by the probability of the survival of one fertilized female, because the expected fecundity for one surviving female overwhelms the system such that population persistence is almost certain.

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Rain forests exhibit enormous species diversity, but the mechanisms for establishing and maintaining such diversity are unknown. Models involving both exploitative and pre-emptive competition have been proposed. We examine two of these models mathematically and show that neither can exhibit species diversity. The inclusion of random fruiting events, together with seedling population decay, can result in both models exhibiting long-term coexistence of many species. However, the parameter values required to simulate such behaviour are more realistic for the pre-emptive competition model than for the exploitative competition model. Our analysis has general implications for all tropical rain forests in that it suggests that a competition-colonisation type trade-off is not a sufficient condition for species coexistence.