Peterson A Townsend
Natural History Museum, Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA.
Q Rev Biol. 2003 Dec;78(4):419-33. doi: 10.1086/378926.
Species' invasions have long been regarded as enormously complex processes, so complex as to defy predictivity. Phases of this process, however, are emerging as highly predictable: the potential geographic course of an invasion can be anticipated with high precision based on the ecological niche characteristics of a species in its native geographic distributional area. This predictivity depends on the premise that ecological niches constitute long-term stable constraints on the potential geographic distributions of species, for which a sizeable body of evidence is accumulating. Hence, although the entire invasion process is indeed complex, the geographic course that invasions are able to take can be anticipated with considerable confidence.
物种入侵长期以来一直被视为极其复杂的过程，复杂到难以预测。然而，这一过程的各个阶段正逐渐变得高度可预测：基于一个物种在其原生地理分布区域的生态位特征，可以高精度地预测入侵的潜在地理进程。这种可预测性取决于这样一个前提，即生态位对物种的潜在地理分布构成长期稳定的限制，目前已有大量证据支持这一点。因此，尽管整个入侵过程确实复杂，但入侵可能采取的地理进程还是可以相当有把握地预测出来的。
