Burns Jean H
Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee 32306-1100, USA.
Ecol Appl. 2006 Aug;16(4):1367-76. doi: 10.1890/1051-0761(2006)016[1367:raeata]2.0.co;2.
Understanding the traits of invasive species may improve the ability to predict, prevent, and manage invasions. I compared morphological and performance traits of five congeneric pairs of invasive and noninvasive Commelinaceae across a factorial experiment using a range of water and nutrient availabilities. Invasive species had greater fecundity and vegetative reproduction than their noninvasive relatives. The invasive species also had higher relative growth rates, greater specific leaf area, and more plastic root-to-shoot ratios than noninvasive species. However, whether a trait was associated with invasiveness often depended on both environment and relatedness. Invasives had greater sexual and vegetative reproduction, higher specific leaf area, and greater relative growth rates than noninvasive congeners, but only in some environments. Differences between invasive and noninvasive taxa were greatest at high nutrient availabilities. These results suggest that studies of invasive species' traits must incorporate information on conditions under which the trait was measured. In addition, incorporating information on relatedness improved our ability to detect associations between species traits, such as specific leaf area and relative growth rate, and invasiveness, suggesting that such information may be required for a complete understanding of what makes a species invasive.
了解入侵物种的特征可能会提高预测、预防和管理入侵的能力。我通过一项析因实验，在一系列水分和养分可利用性条件下，比较了五对同属的入侵性和非入侵性鸭跖草科植物的形态和性能特征。入侵物种比其非入侵性近缘种具有更高的繁殖力和营养繁殖能力。入侵物种还比非入侵物种具有更高的相对生长速率、更大的比叶面积和更具可塑性的根冠比。然而，一个特征是否与入侵性相关通常取决于环境和亲缘关系。入侵种比非入侵同属种具有更强的有性和营养繁殖能力、更高的比叶面积和更高的相对生长速率，但仅在某些环境中如此。入侵和非入侵类群之间的差异在高养分可利用性条件下最为明显。这些结果表明，对入侵物种特征的研究必须纳入有关测量该特征时的条件的信息。此外，纳入亲缘关系信息提高了我们检测物种特征（如比叶面积和相对生长速率）与入侵性之间关联的能力，这表明对于全面理解使一个物种具有入侵性的因素而言，此类信息可能是必需的。
