Typha is an iconic wetland plant found worldwide. Hybridization and anthropogenic disturbances have resulted in large increases in Typha abundance in wetland ecosystems throughout North America at a cost to native floral and faunal biodiversity. As demonstrated by three regional case studies, Typha is capable of rapidly colonizing habitats and forming monodominant vegetation stands due to traits such as robust size, rapid growth rate, and rhizomatic expansion. Increased nutrient inputs into wetlands and altered hydrologic regimes are among the principal anthropogenic drivers of Typha invasion. Typha is associated with a wide range of negative ecological impacts to wetland and agricultural systems, but also is linked with a variety of ecosystem services such as bioremediation and provisioning of biomass, as well as an assortment of traditional cultural uses. Numerous physical, chemical, and hydrologic control methods are used to manage invasive Typha, but results are inconsistent and multiple methods and repeated treatments often are required. While this review focuses on invasive Typha in North America, the literature cited comes from research on Typha and other invasive species from around the world. As such, many of the underlying concepts in this review are relevant to invasive species in other wetland ecosystems worldwide.

Why do parent birds hatch their young asynchronously? This phenotypic handicap exacts a cost of reduced growth and elevated mortality from the last‐hatched or “marginal” offspring, while conferring advantages to the more senior “core” brood. David Lack long ago proposed that marginal offspring allow parents to track resources that are uncertain at the time of clutch initiation. If food is insufficient for the entire brood, hatching asynchrony allows surplus marginal offspring to be culled from the brood efficiently. This in effect represents a secondary adjustment of clutch size. Today Lack's hypothesis remains a central, although controversial, component, of discussions of hatching asynchrony and avian brood reduction. Most field workers report results inconsistent with Lack's hypothesis (e.g., a failure of asynchronously hatching broods to produce more fledglings than do experimentally synchronized broods) and have offered a variety of alternative explanations. Previous workers have focused, with limited success, on single explanations for the complex phenomena of hatching asynchrony. Here we use parental optimism theory to study the secondary adjustment of clutch size in an integrated framework emphasizing ecological (tracking uncertain resources) and developmental (unpredictable survival, quality and/or sex of progeny) uncertainty. We present the results of a 6‐yr study of Yellow‐headed Blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus), a marsh‐nesting icterid. Marginal offspring that are the products of hatching asynchrony serve multiple functions simultaneously: in tracking resources that vary temporally; as a hedge against hatching failure; and in progeny choice via sex‐biased brood reduction. The effect of the phenotypic handicap was diminished both by improving ecological conditions and by hatching failure/experimental clutch reduction. Marginal offspring represent high variance progeny, and synchrony represents a high variance strategy. Brood reduction occurred at low cost and was rendered more efficient by hatching asynchrony, particularly under conditions of stringency.

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Ecological Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ecology. Abstract. Why do parent birds hatch their young asynchronously? This phenotypic handicap exacts a cost of reduced growth and elevated mortality from the last-hatched or "marginal" offspring, while conferring advantages to the more senior "core" brood. David Lack long ago proposed that marginal offspring allow parents to track resources that are uncertain at the time of clutch initiation. If food is insufficient for the entire brood, hatching asynchrony allows surplus marginal offspring to be culled from the brood efficiently. This in effect represents a secondary adjustment of clutch size. Today Lack's hypothesis remains a central, although controversial, component, of discussions of hatching asynchrony and avian brood reduction. Most field workers report results inconsistent with Lack's hypothesis (e.g., a failure of asynchronously hatching broods to produce more fledglings than do experimentally synchronized broods) and have offered a variety of alternative explanations.Previous workers have focused, with limited success, on single explanations for the complex phenomena of hatching asynchrony. Here we use parental optimism theory to study the secondary adjustment of clutch size in an integrated framework emphasizing ecological (tracking uncertain resources) and developmental (unpredictable survival, quality and/or sex of progeny) uncertainty. We present the results of a 6-yr study of Yellow-headed Blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus), a marsh-nesting icterid. Marginal offspring that are the products of hatching asynchrony serve multiple functions simultaneously: in tracking resources that vary temporally; as a hedge against hatching failure; and in progeny choice via sex-biased brood reduction. The effect of the phenotypic handicap was diminished both by improving ecological conditions and by hatching failure/experimental clutch reduction. Marginal offspring represent high variance progeny, and synchrony represents a high variance strategy. Brood reduction occurred at low cost and was rendered more efficient by hatching asynchrony, particularly under conditions of stringency.survival advantages over last-hatched nestmates (Mock 1984, Magrath 1990), provides a striking example. The obvious question is why? Explanations for avian hatching asynchrony fall into three categories: (1) asynchrony is directly adaptive; e.g., by allowing tracking of uncertain resources (reviewed in Pijanowski 1992); (2) asynchrony arises as a sequela to other adaptive trade-offs; e.g., avoidance of whole-brood loss (Hussell 1972, Clark and Wilson 1981); or (3) asynchrony is an unselected b...