Cate Granger stood on the podium looking out over the mostly empty room. She was finishing up her lecture, and paused as the rear door opened a crack and a figure slipped through. The person saluted and then slipped into a back seat.

She smiled and nodded once. It was Greg Jamison, her colleague and friend who, like her, was a professor of evolutionary biology at Stanford University. He was thirty, and just a few years younger than her, but with a mop of blonde hair that made him look more excited teenager than academic.

Both of them specialized in adaptive changes to marine life, with their current research centered on collapsing fish stocks, and how some species were able to adjust through evolution and flourish, sometimes to the detriment of the existing creatures in the habitat. Adapt or Die, they’d call their paper when they finally got around to finishing it.

She changed the screen image behind her. It now showed a grainy picture of a forest, probably from some decades back – there was healthy oak and birch trees, some shrubs and open grass fields. There was also a couple of deer just peering from the underbrush, and between the tree canopies, a few birds were caught mid flight – it was an idyllic forest setting.

“Not all introduced species are invasive,” Cate said, pausing to look around the room at the shiny, youthful faces. Most stared at the screen, but a few young men stole glances at her when they thought she wasn’t watching. She suppressed a smile and continued.

“And some species we don’t even realize are, or even could be, invasive until it’s too late.” She changed the image to one of the same setting, but obviously taken years later. The forest looked melted – green melted – everything smothered under a thick mat of strangling plant life. The trees, the bushes, even the areas that had once been grassy clearings were crushed beneath the living mass.

“And then when we do find out, sometimes these biologicals are so embedded, and the damage so advanced, that all we can do is surrender and learn to live with it.” She looked over her shoulder at the screen. “This is the kudzu vine – Pueraria montana var. lobata – grows up to seven inches per day. We introduced it in 1876 as an ornamental plant to drape over our sunny porches. Kudzu’s real leg-up came in the late ‘30s when it was said to be a ‘miraculous’ gift that would fix nitrogen into overburdened southern soils. So we planted it everywhere.”

She sighed. “It was once dubbed, the savior of the south. Now, it’s eating the south.”

She changed the slide, showing images of zebra mussel infestations in rivers and lakes, then moved onto thirty-foot boa constrictors eating anything moving in the Florida Everglades. Finally, she stopped at an ancient looking drawing.