Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY 12545, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2012 Oct;15(10):1199-210. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01817.x. Epub 2012 Jun 14.
I pose eight questions central to understanding how biological invasions affect ecosystems, assess progress towards answering those questions and suggest ways in which progress might be made. The questions concern the frequency with which invasions affect ecosystems; the circumstances under which ecosystem change is most likely; the functions that are most often affected by invaders; the relationships between changes to ecosystems, communities, and populations; the long-term responses of ecosystems to invasions; interactions between biological invasions and other anthropogenic activities and the difficulty of managing undesirable impacts of non-native species. Some questions have been answered satisfactorily, others require more data and thought, and others might benefit from being reformulated or abandoned. Actions that might speed progress include careful development of trait-based approaches; strategic collection and publication of new data, including more frequent publication of negative results; replacement of expert opinion with hard data where needed; careful consideration of whether questions really need to be answered, especially in cases where answers are being provided for managers and policy-makers; explicit attention to and testing of the domains of theories; integrating invasions better into an ecosystem context; and remembering that our predictive ability is limited and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
我提出了八个问题，这些问题对于理解生物入侵如何影响生态系统至关重要，评估了回答这些问题的进展，并提出了可能取得进展的方法。这些问题涉及入侵对生态系统影响的频率；生态系统变化最有可能发生的情况；最常受到外来入侵物种影响的功能；生态系统、群落和种群变化之间的关系；生态系统对入侵的长期反应；生物入侵与其他人为活动之间的相互作用以及管理非本地物种不良影响的难度。有些问题已经得到了令人满意的回答，有些问题需要更多的数据和思考，有些问题可能受益于重新制定或放弃。可能加快进展的措施包括：仔细开发基于特征的方法；有策略地收集和发布新数据，包括更频繁地发布负面结果；在需要的地方用硬数据代替专家意见；仔细考虑问题是否真的需要回答，特别是在为管理者和决策者提供答案的情况下；明确关注和测试理论的领域；更好地将入侵整合到生态系统背景中；并记住我们的预测能力是有限的，在可预见的未来也将如此。
