Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 61801, USA.
Department of Biology, Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, Virginia, 22812, USA.
Ecology. 2019 May;100(5):e02659. doi: 10.1002/ecy.2659. Epub 2019 Mar 28.
Invasive nonindigenous species are defined by their impacts: they substantially change native communities or ecosystems. Accordingly, invasive species might transform their habitats in ways that eventually become unfavorable to them, causing population declines or even extirpations. Here we use over 40 yr of systematically collected data on the abundance of the invasive rusty crayfish Faxonius rusticus from 17 lakes in northern Wisconsin, USA to explore whether population declines of this invader are related to the prevalence of rocky habitat, which shelters crayfish from predators and is unchanged by crayfish. We predicted that lakes with rock-dominated substrates would be resistant to F. rusticus population declines, whereas lakes lacking rock-dominated substrates would experience F. rusticus declines due to crayfish destruction of shelter-providing macrophytes. We found that in nearly one-half (47%) of the study lakes, F. rusticus experienced population declines over the study time period, and these lakes had significantly lower proportions of rock substrate than lakes that did not experience population declines. We recommend that more studies should investigate the potential for invasive species-mediated community or ecosystem feedbacks to eventually contribute to their own population declines.
它们会显著改变本地社区或生态系统。因此，入侵物种可能会以最终对它们不利的方式改变它们的栖息地，导致种群数量下降甚至灭绝。在这里，我们使用了超过 40 年的美国威斯康星州北部 17 个湖泊中入侵铁锈蟹 Faxonius rusticus 的丰度的系统收集数据，以探讨这种入侵物种的种群下降是否与多岩石生境的流行有关，这种生境可以保护螃蟹免受捕食者的侵害，而且不会因螃蟹而改变。我们预测，以岩石为主的基质的湖泊将抵抗 F. rusticus 种群下降，而缺乏岩石基质的湖泊将由于螃蟹破坏提供庇护的大型水生植物而经历 F. rusticus 下降。我们发现，在近一半（47%）的研究湖泊中，F. rusticus 在研究期间经历了种群下降，这些湖泊的岩石基质比例明显低于没有经历种群下降的湖泊。我们建议应该有更多的研究来调查入侵物种介导的群落或生态系统反馈的潜力，最终可能导致它们自己的种群下降。
