Professor University of California, Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, California, United States
Time and resources are limiting; land managers have too many invasive species to control in too many places. Academia rewards significant results, and ecological studies usually seek to confirm the importance of a particular factor. As a consequence, we overlook the critical need for research that reveals factors that can be ignored. Additionally, a narrow focus on Best Management Practices may miss the opportunity to elucidate where multiple practices are equally good. Project co-design by ecologists and practitioners is the way to generate meaningful data on non-importance. Such research emphasizes effect sizes over statistical significance and sometimes challenges long-held assumptions.
