Interaction of Species Traits and Environmental Disturbance Predicts Invasion Success of Aquatic Microorganisms

A central and perhaps insurmountable challenge of invasion ecology is to predict which combinations of species and habitats most effectively promote and prevent biological invasions. Here, we integrate models of network structure and nonlinear population dynamics to search for potential generalities among trophic factors that may drive invasion success and failure. We simulate invasions where 100 different species attempt to invade 150 different food webs with 15–26 species and a wide range (0.06–0.32) of connectance. These simulations yield 11 438 invasion attempts by non-basal species, 47 per cent of which are successful. At the time of introduction, whether or not the invader is a generalist best predicts final invasion success; however, once the invader establishes itself, it is best distinguished from unsuccessful invaders by occupying a lower trophic position and being relatively invulnerable to predation. In general, variables that reflect the interaction between an invading species and its new community, such as generality and trophic position, best predict invasion success; however, for some trophic categories of invaders, fundamental species traits, such as having the centre of the feeding range low on the theoretical niche axis (for non-omnivorous and omnivorous herbivores), or the topology of the food web (for tertiary carnivores), best predict invasion success. Across all invasion scenarios, a discriminant analysis model predicted successful and failed invasions with 76.5 per cent accuracy for properties at the time of introduction or 100 per cent accuracy for properties at the time of establishment. More generally, our results suggest that tackling the challenge of predicting the properties of species and habitats that promote or inhibit invasions from food web perspective may aid ecologists in identifying rules that govern invasions in natural ecosystems.

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Predicting invasion success of forest pathogenic fungi from species traits

Journal of Applied Ecology ◽

10.1111/j.1365-2664.2011.02039.x ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 48 (6) ◽

pp. 1381-1390 ◽

Cited By ~ 59

Author(s):

Aurore Philibert ◽

Marie-Laure Desprez-Loustau ◽

Bénédicte Fabre ◽

Pascal Frey ◽

Fabien Halkett ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Pathogenic Fungi ◽

Species Traits ◽

Invasion Success

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Effects of species traits and abiotic factors during the stages of plant invasions

10.1101/2020.04.20.050278 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel Vedder ◽

Ludwig Leidinger ◽

Juliano Sarmento Cabral

Keyword(s):

Propagule Pressure ◽

Management Practice ◽

Mechanistic Model ◽

Abiotic Factors ◽

Species Traits ◽

Influential Factors ◽

Invasion Success ◽

List Type ◽

Species Invasions ◽

Dispersal Abilities

AbstractThe success of species invasions depends on multiple factors acting over the four invasion stages transport, colonisation, establishment, and landscape spread. Each of these stages is influenced simultaneously by particular species traits and abiotic factors. While the importance of many of these determinants has already been investigated in relative isolation, they are rarely studied in combination and even then mostly ignore the final phase, i.e., landscape spread.Here we address this shortcoming by exploring the effect of both species traits and abiotic factors on the success of invasions using an individual-based mechanistic model, and relate those factors to the stages of invasion. This approach enables us to explicitly control abiotic factors (temperature as surrogate for productivity, disturbance and propagule pressure) as well as to monitor whole-community trait distributions of environmental adaptation, mass and dispersal abilities. We simulated introductions of plant individuals to an oceanic island to assess which abiotic factors and species traits contribute to invasion success.We found that the most influential factors were higher propagule pressure and a particular set of traits. This invasion trait syndrome was characterized by a relative similarity in functional traits of invasive species to natives, while invasives had on average higher environmental tolerances, higher body mass and increased dispersal abilities, i.e., were more generalist and dispersive.Our results highlight the importance in management practice of reducing the import of alien species, especially from similar habitats.

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Introduction bias: Imbalance in species introductions may obscure the identification of traits associated with invasiveness

10.1101/2021.03.22.436397 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Estibaliz Palma ◽

Jian Yen ◽

Peter Vesk ◽

Montserrat Vila ◽

Jane Catford

Keyword(s):

Invasive Species ◽

Native Species ◽

Extreme Values ◽

Species Traits ◽

Invasion Success ◽

Species Invasion ◽

Species Introductions ◽

Worldwide Distribution ◽

Introduction Pathway ◽

Need To Evaluate

The introduction stage is usually overlooked in trait-based studies of invasiveness, implicitly assuming that species introductions are random. However, human activities promote the movement of specific types of species. Thus, species deliberately introduced for distinct purposes (e.g. gardening, forestry) or as contaminants of human commodities (e.g. stowaway) will likely show particular traits. If species with certain traits have been preferentially introduced (i.e. introduction bias), some traits may have been mistakenly linked to species' invasion abilities due to their influence on introduction probability. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework with different scenarios of introduction bias. The introduction scenarios are: (1) Random introduction, independent from traits; (2) Biologically biased introduction, following the worldwide distribution of the trait; and (3) Human biased introduction, following a theoretical introduction pathway that favours the introduction of species with high values of the trait. We evaluate how the introduced trait distributions in these scenarios may affect trait distributions in naturalized and invasive species pools under different hypothesized associations between traits and the probabilities of naturalization and invasion. The aim of this work is to identify situations where ignoring introduction bias may lead to spurious correlations being found between species' traits and species' ability to become naturalized or invasive. Our framework strongly points to the need to evaluate the traits of species that have become naturalized or invasive along with the traits of species that have failed to do so in order to unravel any existing introduction bias that may confound the correlation between species' traits and invasion success. Overlooking a possible introduction bias may lead to the overestimation of the correlation between the trait and the species' invasion ability, especially in cases when the pool of introduced species shows extreme values of the trait distribution (as compared to a random introduction). Trait-based studies that deserve special attention to avoid undesired effects of introduction bias on their findings are: those that investigate naturalization using only the pool of naturalized species, and those studies that examine invasiveness by comparing invasive species with native species.

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