The moon jelly, or common jellyfish, is often viewed as a problem, an ecological invader, a nuisance to swimmers, or worse.
Wildfires are the only natural disturbances (ie, disasters) man has been able to routinely control, allowing industrialisation of forest and rangeland ecosystems to provide food, water and shelter while limiting both the societal nuisance and ecological service associated with fire on the landscape.
Although they can be useful, they also can be a messy nuisance and an ecological nightmare.
This suggests that more issues are at stake regarding the concept of nuisance species than the explicit ecological and environmental problems (Fazey et al.2006; Wallace 2003).
Pest control, a process that maintains nuisance organisms below economic thresholds, is a complex ecological process often mediated by biodiversity.
In this perspective, socio-physical constructions and environmental issues, such as nuisance species, are the consequences of interwoven socio-ecological processes (Heynen 2006).
This suggests that other issues are at stake in the concept of nuisance species rather than just the problems they raise, grounded mostly in ecological or economic arguments.
Long-distance or migratory flights are strongly related to species ecological preferences and physiology, are survived by few specimens, and do not relate to nuisance situations.
Through the pigeon example, we have shown that the concept of nuisance species relies on complex dynamics that, while certainly and definitely including the animals' ecological and behavioral characteristics (here, their abundance and foraging behavior in cities), also involves interactions with socio-political processes.
We argue for a novel explanation of nuisance species as belonging to 'socio-natures' (see Swyngedowu 2004,1999, Castree and Braun 2001) that, beyond de facto ecological considerations, are historically produced and continuously reformed by networks of human and non-human 'actants' (Latour 1993).
