Dekker Jack. The Evolutionary Ecology of Weeds and Invasive Plants

Weed-Я-Us, 2010. — 197 p.This is a book of the ecology and evolutionary biology of weeds and other colonizing and invasive plants. Weed biology is the ecology and evolution of plants in localities influenced by human activity, notably agriculture. The focus is on these big WHY, HOW & WHAT questions of weed biology:
What are weeds?
Why do we have weeds?
Why do we have the weed species that we do? (And not others)
Why do these weeds look and behave as they do?
How did the weeds we have get to be the way they are?
What is the basis of future changes in weeds?
The goal of this book is to provide comprehensive factual information about weed biology in an evolutionary context as the basis for understanding and management of local weed communities of the future. The goal is also to provide the reader with a dynamic framework to guide understanding of new observations in the future: a mental 'toolkit' to focus observations of new weed phenomena, a way to understand the fundamental forces in nature that cause weediness.
Nothing in biology makes sense unless seen in the light of evolution (ref Dobhansky). Weed and crop management is the management of selection and elimination leading inexorably to the weed adaptations that plague our fields and interfere with our crops. To understand what we observe in agriculture and want to manage more wisely and efficiently, we need to understand how the evolutionary process works in weed communities.
The thesis of this book is that human disturbance (e.g. tillage, herbicides, atmospheric pollution) creates opportunity spacetime by leaving unused resources in a local field with few or no plant neighbors. Opportunity spacetime is seized and exploited by heterogeneous plant phenotypes with preadapted life history traits expressed at favorable times as the growing season unfolds. Successful weed populations assemble and interact with crop and other weedy neighbors in their particular locality. The consequences of successful interactions lead to local adaptation maximizing survival and fitness in that plant community.
The first task is to define what weeds are.