US Forest Service Northern Research Station, Morgantown, WV, 26505, USA.
Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Praha 6 - Suchdol, CZ 165 21, Czech Republic.
Sci Rep. 2018 Aug 14;8(1):12095. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30605-4.
During the last two centuries, thousands of insect species have been transported (largely inadvertently) and established outside of their native ranges worldwide, some with catastrophic ecological and economic impacts. Global variation in numbers of invading species depends on geographic variation in propagule pressure and heterogeneity of environmental resistance to invasions. Elton's diversity-invasibility hypothesis, proposed over sixty years ago, has been widely explored for plants but little is known on how biodiversity affects insect invasions. Here we use species inventories from 44 land areas, ranging from small oceanic islands to entire continents in various world regions, to show that numbers of established insect species are primarily driven by diversity of plants, with both native and non-native plant species richness being the strongest predictor of insect invasions. We find that at large spatial scales, plant diversity directly explains variation in non-native insect species richness among world regions, while geographic factors such as land area, climate and insularity largely affect insect invasions indirectly via their effects on local plant richness.
在过去的两个世纪里，成千上万种昆虫（主要是无意之间）被运输到了它们的原生范围之外的世界各地，并在那里定殖，其中一些对生态和经济造成了灾难性的影响。入侵物种的全球数量变化取决于传播动力在地理上的差异，以及环境对入侵的抵抗力的异质性。埃尔顿的多样性-入侵性假说早在六十多年前就被广泛应用于植物，但对于生物多样性如何影响昆虫入侵，我们知之甚少。在这里，我们使用了来自 44 个陆地地区的物种名录，这些地区的范围从小型海洋岛屿到世界各个地区的整个大陆，结果表明，已定殖的昆虫物种数量主要受植物多样性的驱动，其中本地和非本地植物物种丰富度是昆虫入侵的最强预测因子。我们发现，在大的空间尺度上，植物多样性直接解释了世界各地区之间非本地昆虫物种丰富度的变化，而陆地面积、气候和岛屿等地理因素主要通过其对当地植物丰富度的影响间接地影响昆虫入侵。
