Are there any introduced/non-native species that have BENEFITED their new ecosystem?
Introduced species automatically make for bad change if they take hold because they affect the balance that the old ecosystem maintained. The imbalance they cause can lead to the extinction of native species if the introduced organisms compete more effectively for a niche that the natives currently occupy. However, as to that word, “benefit”, while introduced species will almost never do any good for an ecosystem as a whole (niches are hardly ever empty), some organisms in the ecosystem may be “better off” in a survivalist sense. If a new and better food source is introduced for an animal, for instance, their success in the environment might be increased. However, this would be measurable only after a VERY long period of time. The ability to recognize the the new food would have to be an adaptive behavior leading to greater reproductive success. You would have to be able to correlate increased consumption by the total population of this new food with increased population, range, or som
