Assessing vulnerability and resistance to plant invasions: a native community perspective

Inés Ibáñez,Sam Schaffer-Morrison,Gang Liu,Laís Petri,Sheila Schueller

doi:10.1017/inp.2021.15

Inés Ibáñez, Sam Schaffer-Morrison + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1017/inp.2021.15

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AbstractRisk assessments of biological invasions rarely account for native species performance and community features, but the assessment presented here could provide additional insights for management aimed at decreasing vulnerability or increasing resistance of a plant community to invasions. To gather information on the drivers of native plant communities’ vulnerability and resistance to invasion, we conducted a literature search and meta-analysis. Using the data we collected, we compared native and invasive plant performance between sites with high and low levels of invasion. We then investigated conditions under which native performance increased, decreased, or did not change with respect to invasive plants. We analyzed data from 214 publications summing to 506 observations. There were six main drivers of vulnerability to invasion: disturbance, decrease in resources, increase in resources, lack of biotic resistance, lack of natural enemies, and differences in propagule availability between native and invasive species. The two mechanisms of vulnerability to invasion associated with a strong decline in native plant performance were propagule availability and lack of biotic resistance. Native plants marginally benefited from enemy release and from decreases in resources, while invasive plants strongly benefited from both increased resources and lack of enemies. Fluctuation of resources, decreases and increases, were strongly associated with higher invasive performance, while native plants varied in their responses. These differences were particularly strong in instances of decreasing water or nutrients and of increasing light and nutrients. We found overall neutral to positive responses of native plant communities to disturbance, but natives were outperformed by invasive species when disturbance was caused by human activities. We identified ecosystem features associated with both vulnerability and resistance to invasion, then used our results to inform management aimed at protecting the native community.

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Invasive plants can have major impacts on the diversity and function of native communities (D’Antonio and Vitousek 1992; Mack and D’Antonio 1998; Waller et al 2020)
Informed by results from our analyses, which focused on the performance of the native community rather than only on the invasive species, we have developed several recommendations that could be followed to reduce vulnerability and promote resistance to plant invasions: 1. Management that reduces differences in propagule availability between invasive and native species and/or promotes early establishment of natives after disturbance will likely result in sustainable decrease in invasive plants
After combining the two searches, we extracted information from selected publications on the biophysical features of the system, the type of study, the variables of the native community measured; identified the driver of vulnerability or resistance to the invasion; and recorded metric of plant performance or community assessment collected on the invasive species, and if available, on the native species

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Introduction

Invasive plants can have major impacts on the diversity and function of native communities (D’Antonio and Vitousek 1992; Mack and D’Antonio 1998; Waller et al 2020). Informed by results from our analyses, which focused on the performance of the native community rather than only on the invasive species, we have developed several recommendations that could be followed to reduce vulnerability and promote resistance to plant invasions: 1.

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