Professor Mark Williamson
Emeritus

Profile

Career

Research

Overview

In biological invasions my research centres on variation in the impact of introduced species as measured by their rates of spread, modes of spread and their approach to a limiting range size. The last of those interacts with my interests in macroecology. There the topics studied include range sizes and patterns, species-area relationships, species abundance distributions and the relations between all those.

Discoveries

Alien plants in each of Ireland, Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic take typically 150 years to finish spreading geographically. Many such species have been introduced in the last 150 years and are still spreading.

Projects

• Species abundance distributions in large sets and the comparison of biomass and number measures
• Geographical ranges of species: the effects of scales, transformations, patterns
• Analysis of the spatio-temporal spread of invasive plants
• Modelling the spread of invasive species to their range limit

Publications

Selected publications

Williamson M (2010) Variation in the rate and pattern of spread in introduced species and its implications. In: Perrings C, Mooney H, Williamson M (eds) Bioinvasions and Globalization, Oxford University Press, pp. 56-65.

Williamson M (2010) Why do species abundance distributions of individuals and of biomass behave differently under sampling? Oikos, 119, 1697-1699.

Full publications list

Williamson M, Dehnen-Schmutz K, Kühn I, Hill M, Klotz S, Milbau A, Stout J, Pyšek P (2009) The distribution of range sizes of native and alien plants in four European countries and the effects of residence time. Diversity and Distributions 15: 158-166.

Williamson M, Pitchford J, Dytham C (2009) Spreading to a limit: some preliminary results. Neobiota 8: 43-51.

Gillespie RG, Williamson M (2009) Britain and Ireland. In: Encyclopedia of Islands, Gillespie RG, Clague DA (eds), pp 116-126. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, USA.

Williamson M (2010) Variation in the rate and pattern of spread in introduced species and its implications. In: Perrings C, Mooney H, Williamson M (eds) Bioinvasions and Globalization, Oxford University Press, pp. 56-65.

Williamson M (2010) Why do species abundance distributions of individuals and of biomass behave differently under sampling? Oikos, 119, 1697-1699.

Williamson M, McGowan, JA (2010) The copepod communities of the north and south Pacific central gyres and the form of the species-abundance distribution. Journal of Plankton Research, 32, 273-283.

Perrings C, Mooney H, Williamson M (2010) The problem of biologicalinvasions. In: Perrings C, Mooney H, Williamson M (eds) Bioinvasions and Globalization, Oxford University Press, pp. 1-16.

Perrings C, Burgiel S, Lonsdale M, Mooney H, Williamson M (2010) Globalization and bioinvasions: the international policy problem. In: Perrings C, Mooney H, Williamson M (eds) Bioinvasions and Globalization, Oxford University Press, pp. 235-250.

Perrings C, Mooney H, Williamson M (eds) (2010) Bioinvasions and Globalization: Ecology, Economics, Management, and Policy. Oxford University Press, 267 pp.

Perrings C, Burgiel S, Lonsdale M, Mooney H, Williamson M (2010) International cooperation in the solution to trade-related invasive species risks. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1195, 198-212.

Gassó N, Pyšek P, Vilà M, Williamson M (2010) Spreading to a limit: the time required for a neophyte to reach its maximum range. Diversity and Distributions, 16, 310-311.

Dehnen-Schmutz K, Williamson M (2010): Rhododendron ponticum in Britain and Ireland: social, economic and ecological factors in its successful invasion. pp 171-196 in: Bioinvaders (no author or editor), themes in environmental history series, White Horse Press, Strond, UK. (Reprint of a 2006 paper in Environment and History, 12, 325-350).

Williamson M. (2011) Alien plants in Britain, in Pimentel D. (ed.) Biological Invasions: Economic and Environmental Costs of Alien Plant, Animal and Microbe Species, 2nd edition, pp. 107-128, Taylor & Francis, Boca Raton, Florida, USA

Simberloff D. et al. (2011) Non-natives: 141 scientists object. Nature 475, 36.

Perrings C, Mooney H, Williamson M (2011) The economics of invasives. Current Conservation 4, 14-17.

Williamson M, Meyerson LA, Auge H (2011) Invasion science, ecology and economics:
seeking roads not taken Neobiota 10, 1-5.

Thomas CD, Williamson M (2012) Extinction and climate change. Nature 482, E4-E5 (brief communications arising).

Anderson BJ, Chiarucci A, Williamson M (2012) How differences in plant abundance measures produce different species-abundance distributions. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 3, 783-786.

Rodriguez-Cabal M, Williamson M, Simberloff D (2013) Overestimation of establishment success of non-native birds in Hawaii and Britain. Biological Invasions 15, 249–252.