Alliaria petiolata, or garlic mustard, is a Eurasian plant that is rapidly invading forests in the United States and Canada, leaving land managers and stakeholders seeking guidance from the scientific community in order to understand its impacts on native ecosystems and prioritize management strategies. Garlic mustard is thought to be a major driver of ecosystem and community change through its interactions with soil biota. It is known to interfere with native plants by disrupting mycorrhizal mutualisms, leaving legacy effects that can persist for years after invasion. This invader is also highly competitive due to its accelerated spring phenology, high reproductive output, high plasticity, and low preference as forage by generalist herbivores. Its interactions with native and nonnative species, and its implications for forest ecosystems can be complex. Several questions remain about the role of garlic mustard in present and future Northeastern forests, and a synthesis of ecological impacts and management recommendations is imperative. The goals of this session are to synthesize the current state of knowledge and discuss the role of garlic mustard as a model species for understanding invasion biology and its impacts. We will feature recent work in a range of interdisciplinary fields: ecology, chemical biology, evolutionary genetics, plant-soil feedbacks, community and ecosystem impacts, multitrophic interactions, climate change interactions and conservation. We also expect this session to identify knowledge gaps and initiate discussions about future collaborative work and transitions between research and adaptive management approaches. The topics of this session will be of interest to a broad range of ecologists, land managers, conservation scientists, and restoration practitioners. It will also directly address the ESA 2016 theme, as garlic mustard (and other invasive plants) has the potential to modify ecosystems and create novel species assemblages, and the distribution, severity and speed of these invasions are modified by anthropogenic changes in habitats and climate.