Abstract
Whether plant invasions pose a great threat to native plant diversity is still hotly debated due to conflicting findings. More importantly, we know little about the mechanisms of invasion impacts on native plant richness. We examined how Solidago canadensis invasion influenced native plants using data from 291 pairs of invaded and uninvaded plots covering an entire invaded range, and quantified the relative contributions of climate, recipient communities, and S. canadensis to invasion impacts. There were three types of invasion consequences for native plant species richness (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative impacts). Overall, the relative contributions of recipient communities, S. canadensis and climate to invasion impacts were 71.39%, 21.46% and 7.15%, respectively; furthermore, the roles of recipient communities, S. canadensis and climate were largely ascribed to plant diversity, density and cover, and precipitation. In terms of direct effects, invasion impacts were negatively linked to temperature and native plant communities, and positively to precipitation and soil microbes. Soil microbes were crucial in the network of indirect effects on invasion impacts. These findings suggest that the characteristics of recipient communities are the most important determinants of invasion impacts and that invasion impacts may be a continuum across an entire invaded range.
Highlights
Change dramatically over time[18,23,24]
The first key finding of our study was that the invasive forb S. canadensis simultaneously had three different consequences for native plant species richness across the entire invaded range
This is the first study to demonstrate that a single invasive plant species possesses three contrasting impacts on native plants based on hundreds of plots covering the Latent variable Temperature Precipitation Native plant community Soil abiotic properties Soil microorganisms
Summary
Change dramatically over time[18,23,24]. Third, the impacts of invasive species are dependent on invader attributes and on characteristics of the invaded community[25,26]. The discrepancies among different studies may be implicated to different research methods, like observational versus experimental field studies Despite this continuing debate, there is little information in the literature for what determines contrasting invasion impacts on diversity, with an exception of space-dependence[3,14,18,22]. To examine the impacts of S. canadensis invasion on native plant species richness across an entire invaded range and elucidate the associated mechanisms, we conducted a comparative field study based on 291 pairs of invaded and uninvaded plots. (2) how climate, recipient community characteristics and S. canadensis traits differentially determine invasion impacts on native plant species richness? We addressed the following questions: (1) whether the impacts of S. canadensis invasion on native plant species richness are unidirectional or not across the invaded range? and (2) how climate, recipient community characteristics and S. canadensis traits differentially determine invasion impacts on native plant species richness?
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