Abstract
Invasive, non-native species can have tremendous impacts on biotic communities, where they reduce the abundance and diversity of local species. However, it remains unclear whether impacts of non-native species arise from their high abundance or whether each non-native individual has a disproportionate impact – that is, a higher per-capita effect – on co-occurring species compared to impacts by native species. Using a long-term study of wetlands, we asked how temporal variation in dominant native and non-native plants impacted the abundance and richness of other plants in the recipient community. Non-native plants reached higher abundances than natives and had greater per-capita effects. The abundance–impact relationship between plant abundance and richness was nonlinear. Compared with increasing native abundance, increasing non-native abundance was associated with steeper declines in richness because of greater per-capita effects and nonlinearities in the abundance–impact relationship. Our study supports eco-evolutionary novelty of non-natives as a driver of their outsized impacts on communities.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1214-1220 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Ecology Letters |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2019 |
Keywords
- Abundance–Impact Curves
- community assembly
- eco-evolutionary novelty
- invasive species impacts
- longitudinal analysis
- per-capita effects
- wetlands
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics