Macroscale analyses suggest invasive plant impacts depend more on the composition of invading plants than on environmental context
Beaury, EM; Sofaer, HR; Early, R; et al.Pearse, IS; Blumenthal, DM; Corbin, JD; Diez, J; Dukes, JS; Barnett, DT; Ibáñez, I; Petri, L; Vilà, M; Bradley, BA
Date: 29 August 2023
Article
Journal
Global Ecology and Biogeography
Publisher
Wiley
Publisher DOI
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Abstract
Aim
Native biodiversity is threatened by the spread of non-native invasive species. Many studies demonstrate that invasions reduce local biodiversity but we lack an understanding of how impacts vary across environments at the macroscale. Using ~11,500 vegetation surveys from ecosystems across the United States, we quantified how the ...
Aim
Native biodiversity is threatened by the spread of non-native invasive species. Many studies demonstrate that invasions reduce local biodiversity but we lack an understanding of how impacts vary across environments at the macroscale. Using ~11,500 vegetation surveys from ecosystems across the United States, we quantified how the relationship between non-native plant cover and native plant diversity varied across different compositions of invading plants (measured by non-native plant richness and evenness) and environmental contexts (measured by productivity and human activity).
Location
Continental United States.
Time Period
Surveys from 1990s-present.
Major Taxa Studied
Terrestrial plant communities.
Methods
We fit mixed effects models to understand how native plant richness, diversity and evenness varied with non-native cover. We tested how this relationship varied when non-native cover interacted with non-native plant richness and evenness, and with productivity and human activity.
Results
Across the United States, communities with greater cover of non-native plants had lower native plant richness and diversity but higher evenness, suggesting rare native plants can be lost while dominant plants decline in abundance. The relationship between non-native cover and native community diversity varied with non-native plant richness and evenness but was not associated with productivity and human activity. Negative associations were strongest in areas with low non-native richness and evenness, characterizing plant communities that were invaded by a dominant non-native plant.
Main Conclusions
Non-native plant cover provides a first approximation of invasion impacts on native community diversity, but the magnitude of impact depended on non-native plant richness and evenness. Relationships between non-native cover and native diversity were consistent in strength across continental scale gradients of productivity and human activity. Therefore, at the macroscale, invasive plant impacts on native plant communities likely depend more on the characteristics of the invading plants, that is the presence of a dominant invader, than on the environmental context.
Ecology and Conservation
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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