This dissertation aims to improve the field of invasive species management with new tools and approaches that help ground application in evidence. Common assumptions of invasive species include that most species have significant and negative impacts, that management mitigates these harms and brings conservation benefits, and that control efforts are overall supported by the public. Evidence supporting these claims, however, is the exception, not the rule. This dissertation aims to probe these assumptions and add ecological and social evidence to these long-standing assumptions. Public attitudes towards management can vary according to where management is being conducted, what is being targeted, the benefits it is expected to bring, and how it is being done. However, most existing evidence draws from local case studies, small sample sizes, and qualitative research approaches, challenging generalizations about where social attitudes stand on fundamental aspects of management shared by all programs. In the first chapter, I take an experimental and quantitative approach to exploring these questions of social acceptability and use an online, experimental survey to assess attitudes from a large, stratified sample of the U.S. population. In Chapter Two, I explore ecological and evolutionary implications of releasing the leaf-feeding beetle, Galerucella birmanica, for biological control of water chestnut, Trapa natans, an invasive aquatic plant in northeastern North America. Introduction of the specialist G. birmanica will bring the species into novel associations with a native congeneric beetle, G. nymphaeae. In the first pre-release assessment of hybridization potential in a classical biological control context, I explore interspecific mating behaviors, follow larval development of hybrids on various host plants, and quantify adult oviposition decisions by hybrids. We use this information to inform ecological and evolutionary outcomes of T. natans biological control, and call for more attention to the possibility of hybridization in evaluations of biological control insects. In Chapter Three, I address the assumption-evidence gap that exists for impacts of invasive species, which are widely thought of as detrimental to native species, but often lacking empirical evidence justifying those claims. I center biological outcomes of native species in this chapter, and use fathead minnows and green frog tadpoles as biological indicators for invasive species impacts. Field deployments of caged cohorts of minnows and tadpoles reveal that these methods are tractable and flexible for understanding outcomes of invasive species, and provide clear evidence of negative impacts to species from large beds of T. natans. Taken together, these three chapters offer new approaches for generating social and ecological evidence for the improvement of invasive species management.