Events

Dr Lise Ruffino

Mediterranean Institute of Ecology and Palaeoecology, Paul Cezanne University, Aix-en-Provence, France.

Nowadays, biological invasions are considered as a major threat to biodiversity on Earth, and are identified as the leading cause of most native species extinctions on islands over the past 400 years. The recent increase in species introduction rate on islands is mainly related to human movements and settlement around the world. Rats Rattus spp. are good examples of species which have successfully colonized most islands of the world with ingenuity. Diet and habitat adaptability (breadth and flexibility) are often proposed to explain their wide invasion success on islands with differing environmental conditions and, also, their large impacts on native wildlife.

With islands in every ocean basin, France can take advantage of a unique biological patrimony because of its very large biodiversity and incredible biomass. From 2006 to 2010, five French research teams (research programme ‘ALIENS’) tracked black rat R. rattus populations on islands with differing environmental contexts (tropical, temperate, subantarctic). In this talk, I will give some examples of the amazing biodiversity occurring on these islands, highlight some of the main patterns we found out about rat feeding behavior and habitat use (sometimes unexpected and contrasted), and raise how the potential impacts of introduced rats on vulnerable wildlife should be taken into account when planning island conservation actions.