An evolutionary modelling approach to understanding the factors behind plant invasiveness and community susceptibility to invasion

Ecologists have had limited success in understanding which introduced species may become invasive. An evolutionary model is used to investigate which traits are associated with invasiveness. Translocation experiments were simulated in which species were moved into similar but evolutionary younger communities. The main findings were that species that had previously been the most abundant in their original communities have significantly higher rates of establishment than did species that had previously occurred at low abundance in their original community. However if establishment did occur, previously abundant and previously low abundance species were equally likely to become dominant and were equally likely to exclude other species from their new community. There was a suggestion that the species that were most likely to establish and exclude others were “genetically” different. When species that had evolved in different simulations (but with identical environmental conditions), were tr...

生态学家在解析哪些外来物种可能演变为入侵物种的问题上，迄今仍进展有限。本研究采用演化模型，探究与入侵性相关的物种性状。研究模拟了物种易位实验：将物种迁移至结构相似但演化历程更短的群落中。核心研究结果显示，在原群落中原本种群丰度最高的物种，其在新群落中的定殖率显著高于原群落中丰度较低的物种。但若成功定殖，无论原群落丰度高低，两类物种成为群落优势种的概率并无显著差异，且二者排斥新群落中其他物种的能力也无明显区别。有研究迹象表明，最易实现定殖并排斥其他物种的物种，在「遗传（genetic）」层面存在差异。当对在不同模拟场景（但环境条件完全一致）中演化而来的物种进行……