By Alex J. Jensen, Lily M. Thompson, and Aaron J. Bunch

Attribution: “coyote” by emdot is licensed under CC BY 2.0. “Armadillo” by Rich Anderson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This Plain Language Summary is published in advance of the paper discussed. Please check back soon for a link to the full paper.

The spread of species beyond their native range can raise ecological and economic alarm. But time changes things; we wanted to know if perceptions of novel species can change over time, and if they can, how quickly. Using a survey and the spread of two novel species (coyote and armadillo) through the southeastern United States in the last 75 years, we show that perceptions do change and they change quite rapidly. More specifically, the longer coyotes and armadillos were present, the more likely the general public was to perceive them as native. When asked about non-native species more generally, half of the respondents said that non-native species could become native in their eyes, and this would take an average of 100 years. Taken together, we find support for generational differences in our respondents, where younger respondents tended to contribute to this shift to nativeness more than older respondents. We think this is good evidence for ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, which occurs because younger respondents’ experiences are the new baseline (e.g., they always remember coyotes being around). Given the importance of labels like non-native and native for management and conservation, our findings highlight how public perceptions of these labels can rapidly shift.