School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2012;7(3):e32407. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032407. Epub 2012 Mar 5.
Recent discussion on invasive species has invigorated the debate on strategies to manage these species. Lantana camara L., a shrub native to the American tropics, has become one of the worst weeds in recorded history. In Australia, India and South Africa, Lantana has become very widespread occupying millions of hectares of land. Here, we examine historical records to reconstruct invasion and management of Lantana over two centuries and ask: Can we fight the spread of invasive species or do we need to develop strategies for their adaptive management? We carried out extensive research of historical records constituting over 75% of records on invasion and management of this species in the three countries. The records indicate that governments in Australia, India and South Africa have taken aggressive measures to eradicate Lantana over the last two centuries, but these efforts have been largely unsuccessful. We found that despite control measures, the invasion trajectory of Lantana has continued upwards and that post-war land-use change might have been a possible trigger for this spread. A large majority of studies on invasive species address timescales of less than one year; and even fewer address timescales of >10 years. An understanding of species invasions over long time-scales is of paramount importance. While archival records may give only a partial picture of the spread and management of invasive species, in the absence of any other long-term dataset on the ecology of Lantana, our study provides an important insight into its invasion, spread and management over two centuries and across three continents. While the established paradigm is to expend available resources on attempting to eradicate invasive species, our findings suggest that in the future, conservationists will need to develop strategies for their adaptive management rather than fighting a losing battle.
最近关于入侵物种的讨论激发了人们对管理这些物种策略的辩论。马缨丹（Lantana camara L.）原产于美洲热带，是有记录以来最严重的杂草之一。在澳大利亚、印度和南非，马缨丹已经广泛分布，占据了数百万公顷的土地。在这里，我们通过考察历史记录，重建了两个多世纪以来马缨丹的入侵和管理过程，并提出了以下问题：我们能否阻止入侵物种的传播，或者我们是否需要制定策略对其进行适应性管理？我们对构成这三个国家该物种入侵和管理记录的 75%以上的历史记录进行了广泛的研究。这些记录表明，澳大利亚、印度和南非政府在过去两个世纪中采取了积极措施来消灭马缨丹，但这些努力在很大程度上是失败的。我们发现，尽管采取了控制措施，马缨丹的入侵轨迹仍在继续上升，战后土地利用的变化可能是其传播的一个潜在触发因素。大多数关于入侵物种的研究都集中在不到一年的时间尺度上，而很少有研究关注超过 10 年的时间尺度。了解物种的长期入侵情况至关重要。尽管档案记录可能只提供了入侵物种传播和管理的部分情况，但在缺乏关于马缨丹生态学的任何其他长期数据集的情况下，我们的研究为其在两个多世纪和三大洲的入侵、传播和管理提供了重要的见解。虽然既定的模式是投入可用资源来试图消灭入侵物种，但我们的研究结果表明，未来保护主义者将需要制定策略对其进行适应性管理，而不是打一场注定失败的战斗。
