Ecological benefits of integrative weed management of Melaleuca quinquenervia in Big Cypress National Preserve

The southern tip of North America coalesces into one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands, the Everglades, Florida, USA. Though this region is much like an island, home to high biodiversity and endemism, it is also the site of a century of development and associated landscape-scale species invasions. Melaleuca quinquenervia (hereafter melaleuca), a tree native to tropical Australia, was planted extensively throughout south Florida as street trees, levee stabilizers, and later to reduce standing water in marshy areas. Through extensive cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Australian Biological Control Laboratory, several biological control agents were released, three of which later successfully established. Herein we examine evidence that plant community shifts determined from vegetation surveys and remotely sensed images reflect changes from melaleuca-dominated wetlands (before management) to native communities (after management). Melaleuca-dominated community types decreased from 1990 to 2020 by more than 99