Biological Invasions最新文献

Predictive information on invasive species impacts under climate warming is critical for risk assessment. The comparative functional response approach-an experimental method measuring feeding efficiency of a predator along a prey gradient-can forecast ecological impacts of an invader by quantifying its resource consumption under varying conditions. This approach was applied to the Tench Tinca tinca, an invasive benthivorous fish currently spreading in the St Lawrence River, and two native benthivorous species, the White Sucker Catostomus commersonii and the Brown Bullhead Ameiurus nebulosus. Body condition was used as a measure of long-term fitness under a given temperature treatment, and the Functional Response Ratio (FRR) and Relative Impact Potential (RIP) were used as metrics describing trophic impact. All species were acclimated to 18 °C and 25 °C; the former temperature represents the physiological optimum for the chosen native species, whereas the latter temperature is the projected near-future mean summer maximum for the lower Great Lakes. Feeding rates on larval chironomids were measured in 3-h trials at prey densities ranging from 2 to 500. White Sucker feeding efficiency was unaffected by temperature and consistently higher than the Tench, whereas the Tench exhibited a lower maximum feeding rate at 25 °C compared to 18 °C. Despite superior feeding rates, White Suckers showed diminished body condition at the elevated temperature, suggesting their foraging advantage might not persist under warming conditions. These findings suggest Tench possess greater thermal compensation capacity than White Suckers, indicated by their stable condition factors at elevated temperatures despite lower maximum feeding rates. In a second set of experiments, Tench achieved greater feeding efficiency than Brown Bullhead, but both species showed reduced efficiency at elevated temperatures. However, Brown Bullhead had increased body condition indices following experiments. FRR and RIP metrics indicated that Tench holds a competitive feeding advantage over Brown Bullhead that is reduced under elevated temperatures. Tench impact depends on both feeding efficiency and its capacity to maintain fitness in warm waters. Our results highlight the necessity of considering thermal adaptation in ecological forecasting. Climate warming may reshape competitive dynamics and ecosystem impact pathways beyond direct consumption effects.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10530-026-03767-w.

Biological invasions pose major ecological and economic threats, and extensive research has been dedicated to understanding and predicting their dynamics. Most studies focus on the biological invasion of single species, and only in recent years has it been realized that multi-species interactions that involve native and invasive host species and their microbial symbionts can play important roles in determining invasion outputs. A theoretical framework that treats these interactions and their impact is lacking. Here we offer such a framework and use it to explore possible dynamics that may emerge from the sharing of native and non-native symbionts among native and non-native host species. Thus, for example, invasive plants might benefit from native microbial communities in the soil, or might be particularly successful if they carry with them parasites to which competing native hosts are susceptible. On the other hand, invasion might be hindered by native parasites that spread from native to invasive individuals. The mathematical framework that we present in this study provides a new mechanistic, cohesive, and intuition-enhancing tool for theoretically exploring the ways by which the subtleties of host-microbe relationships can influence invasion dynamics. We identify multiple pathways through which microbes can facilitate (or prevent) host invasion, microbial invasion, and the invasion of both hosts and their co-introduced microbes. We disentangle invasion outcomes and suggest possible ecological dynamics that may be underexplored in current invasion biology literature. Our work sets the foundations for invasion theory that includes a community-level view of invasive and native hosts as well as their microbial symbionts.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10530-025-03711-4.

Invaders can have devastating impacts on freshwater ecosystems, but these impacts can subside over time as ecosystems "adapt" to the invasion of new species. We analyzed changes in species composition and density of molluscs in Oneida Lake (New York, USA), one of the best studied North American lakes based on detailed surveys conducted in 1915-17, 1967-68, 1992-95, 2012, and 2022-23, and on annual benthic surveys from 2009 through 2023. Eutrophication and habitat alteration after 1920 resulted in a 25% decline in species richness and a 95% decline in the density of native gastropods by 1967, while species richness of unionids did not change. The arrival of zebra mussels in 1991 and quagga mussels in 2005 was associated with an increase in species richness and density of native gastropods and an extirpation of unionids by 1995. However, an invasion by the round goby in 2013 led to a significant decline across all gastropod families, disproportionately impacting soft-shelled and shallow-dwelling species, while other species, including invasive dreissenids, partially recovered 3-7 years after the goby invasion. This mollusc recovery was depth-related and was limited to deeper areas. Altogether, molluscan communities were sensitive to ecosystem change and invasives species, with some invaders offsetting the impacts of eutrophication and habitat alterations. While individual stressors have taxon-specific and sometimes positive impacts, eutrophication and species invasions have collectively decimated the native mollusc community over the past century.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10530-025-03540-5.

Predicting invasion risk to novel environments is essential for risk management and conservation decision making but the evolutionary lineage at which to make these predictions is often unclear. Here we predict the current suitability across the United Kingdom (UK) for the alpine newt Ichthyosaura alpestris, a species with a complex evolutionary history, a broad native range, a growing number of introduced populations and anecdotal reports of ecological consequences to native amphibian communities. We use species distribution and ecological niche modelling to predict environmental suitability of the alpine newt in the UK at both the species-level and lineage-level and to quantify evolutionary lineage niche overlap. We show good model transferability at the species-level and parts of the UK-especially central and eastern England and parts of central and northern Scotland-to be highly environmentally suitable for the alpine newt. Our findings provide evidence of environmental niche differences at the lineage-level, with the Greek lineage being distinct from most other lineages, but with low confidence in maxent predictions for the Greek, Balkan and Italian lineages due to high levels of extrapolation. In contrast, the niche of the UK records appear to share the same niche as the Central lineage. We find 66% of currently known alpine newt records to fall within areas predicted to be environmentally suitable at the species-level, providing a series of testable hypotheses to better understand the invasion ecology of this species in the UK.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10530-025-03543-2.

The rapid expansion of global trade, tourism, and human mobility has increased the introduction of alien plants into new regions. Here, we assessed the role of plant characteristics and climatic suitability in the naturalization success of 1,407 cultivated alien plants in Southern Africa. We used mediation analysis with climate suitability as a mediator to quantify the direct and indirect effects of plant characteristics, including phylogenetic relatedness, seed mass, plant height, native origins, native range size, and growth forms on naturalization success. We found that naturalized species have higher climatic suitability compared to non-naturalized ones. Additionally, seed mass, plant height, short-lived herbaceous growth form, and native range size are positively associated with naturalization success. In contrast, phylogenetic relatedness and a native origin in Europe were negatively associated with naturalization success. These associations were indirectly mediated by climatic suitability, with indirect effects accounting for more than 30% of the total effect in all cases. Our study underscores the significance of considering the role of climatic suitability for a comprehensive understanding of how plant characteristics impact the naturalization success of alien plants.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10530-025-03677-3.

Much evidence has shown that adaptive behavior can greatly modulate the dynamics of food webs, but little is known about how adaptive behaviors of invasive plant species affect community composition in multilayered networks. Following a proven network model, we constructed networks of native communities that are invaded by exotic plant species based on three linkage rules. We examined the effects of both adaptive behavior and network connectance of invasive plant species on the persistence of native species and diversity-invasion success relationship. Results showed that community persistence was mainly affected by the connectance of invasive plant species regardless of adaptive behavior. Given a fixed proportion (F₁) of native mutualist species linked to the invasive plant species, community persistence displayed an inverse hump-shaped relationship with the increasing proportion (F₂) of native plant species linked to the invasive plant species. Compared to the results without adaptive behavior, the adaptive behavior made most negative diversity-invasion relationship become a nonlinear U-shape at fixed proportion (F₁). In addition, the adaptive behavior made most negative diversity-invasion relationship insignificant for some proportion (F₁) when proportion (F₂) was fixed. It could even reverse this relationship if the invading species was more likely to link to native species already having fewer links than those having higher links. Our results underline the importance of considering adaptive behavior and the network degree of invasive plant species for understanding the effect of invasive species on the structure and composition of ecological networks.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10530-025-03601-9.

Whilst the impacts of individual invasive species are relatively well studied, the combined effects of both plant and animal invasive species on multispecies assemblages are poorly understood. We studied the impact of two invasive species-the mesquite tree, Neltuma juliflora, and free-ranging dog, Canis familiaris, on a guild of native mesocarnivores in the human-dominated grasslands of the Thar desert. We found that the mesquite had varying effects on the mesocarnivore guild, benefiting generalist species such as the golden jackal Canis aureus and jungle cat Felis chaus, while negatively affecting open habitat specialist species such as Indian desert fox Vulpes v. pusilla, Indian fox Vulpes bengalensis, and desert cat Felis lybica ornata. All mesocarnivores strongly avoided dogs along the spatial or temporal niche axis, likely to evade interference competition. The high prevalence of dogs in these landscapes could lead to the competitive exclusion of smaller native species, such as the Indian fox, resulting in a local decline in their population. Our study reveals significant impacts of both plant and animal invasive species on native mesocarnivores, altering their distribution and activity patterns, with potential consequences for long-term population persistence. We suggest control of mesquite in areas prioritised for conservation of open habitat specialists such as desert fox, Indian fox, and desert cat, and removal or restriction on the movement of dogs in sensitive wildlife habitats.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10530-025-03659-5.

The impacts of invasive plants on arthropod communities are often reported to be negative and have predominantly been explored aboveground, but there is a paucity of information regarding what happens belowground. To address this gap, we compared soil properties and soil fauna communities associated with two native plant species (Leptospermum scoparium—mānuka and Chionochloa rubra—red tussock) and two invasive species (non-N-fixing Calluna vulgaris—European heather and N-fixing Cytisus scoparius—Scotch broom) in the Central Plateau of New Zealand. We expected that (1) at individual plant level soil properties would be different under invasive and native plant species, with higher soil nutrient concentrations under invasive species, especially N-fixing broom; (2) total abundance of soil fauna would be higher under invasive plant species, as generally positive impact of invasive plants on soil invertebrates is indicated in the literature; (3) invasive plants, and especially N-fixing broom, will be associated with greater abundances of soil decomposer groups. We found that soil properties and soil fauna assemblages did not cluster by plant invasive status as initially predicted. At individual plant level, there was similarity in soil conditions between mānuka and broom, and between red tussock and heather. The invasive N-fixer (broom) had positive effects on soil N availability, with higher N pool and lower C/N ratio in soil under this species. There were no consistent differences in total soil fauna abundance between invasive and native plants. Broom and mānuka were associated with higher abundances of Collembola, Oligochaeta and Diplopoda; heather and red tussock had higher abundances of Hymenoptera and Hemiptera. Significantly more Oligochaeta and Collembola under broom matched the prediction of invasive plants (and especially N-fixing invasives) being associated with greater abundances of decomposers. However, another important decomposer group—oribatid mites—did not show the same tendency. These results evidence that simplified generalizations regarding the impacts of invasive plants are unlikely to be justified, since the ecological effects of plant invasions are complex and do not always follow the same pattern. Therefore, we need to take into consideration the ecological context and the traits of individual plant species and target organisms in an unbiased manner to fully understand the impacts of plant invasions.

Invasive species are an increasing source of economic loss, costing nations billions of dollars annually. Significant financial resources are spent to manage invasive species, but few comprehensive syntheses of the economic expenditures associated with this management effort exist. As a relatively affluent developed country, the United States should serve as a model of how to both manage invasive species and, more critically, understand the economic costs of doing so. To begin understanding the scale of expenditures on invasive species in the U.S., our goal was to quantify spending on invasive species management at the state level. We contacted natural resource management officials from all 50 states following a standardized protocol. While 47 of the 50 states provided expenditures for at least one of the five years requested (2017–2021), the distribution of expenditures by state varied dramatically, suggesting that actual expenditures might be much higher than those reported. While most states shared annual expenditures, they varied by an order of magnitude from $28,370 for Connecticut to $118,695,389 for Washington. Specifically, a widespread lack of careful and consistent expense tracking and coordination within and between states made clear and correct evaluation difficult. While the expenditures we obtained are almost certainly a significant underestimate, they also represent a serious lack of accounting at a state level. Hence, better tracking and coordination, within and between states, will be critical to handle the ongoing invasive species crisis.

Wetlands around the world face unprecedented threats, including from invasive species. In North America, the invasive cattail hybrid Typha x glauca dominates wetlands around the Laurentian Great Lakes; more recently it was found in high abundance across the central and eastern Prairie Pothole Region, an area that includes one of the world’s largest wetland complexes. Surveys of the Typha hybrid zone have so far been largely conducted in areas where hybrids are well established, and it therefore remains unclear whether the range expansion of this invasive hybrid occurs after the establishment of its maternal species, T. angustifolia. We surveyed 50 wetlands in the western PPR and found that while 75% of plants were native T. latifolia, the second most common group was F₁ hybrids, which had greater abundance and occupancy than T. angustifolia despite the fact that T. angustifolia produces relatively few hybrid seeds; our findings therefore highlight the importance of long-distance dispersal for this hybrid range expansion. The distribution of hybrids combined with the paucity of non-F1 hybrids suggest that the western PPR represents a leading edge of the range expansion by invasive T. × glauca. Our results show that T. × glauca has the capacity for continued range expansion that does not rely on the presence of T. angustifolia, and the impacts of this range expansion should be monitored because of its potential to impede ecosystem services and reduce local biodiversity.