Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, BT9 5DL, UK.
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Harborne Building, Reading, RG6 6AS, UK.
Sci Rep. 2019 Oct 25;9(1):15314. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-51705-9.
Invasive species continue to proliferate and detrimentally impact ecosystems on a global scale. Whilst impacts are well-documented for many invaders, we lack tools to predict biotic resistance and invasion success. Biotic resistance from communities may be a particularly important determinant of the success of invaders. The present study develops traditional ecological concepts to better understand and quantify biotic resistance. We quantified predation towards the highly invasive Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus and a representative native mosquito Culex pipiens by three native and widespread cyclopoid copepods, using functional response and prey switching experiments. All copepods demonstrated higher magnitude type II functional responses towards the invasive prey over the analogous native prey, aligned with higher attack and maximum feeding rates. All predators exhibited significant, frequency-independent prey preferences for the invader. With these results, we developed a novel metric for biotic resistance which integrates predator numerical response proxies, revealing differential biotic resistance potential among predators. Our results are consistent with field patterns of biotic resistance and invasion success, illustrating the predictive capacity of our methods. We thus propose the further development of traditional ecological concepts, such as functional responses, numerical responses and prey switching, in the evaluation of biotic resistance and invasion success.
入侵物种继续在全球范围内扩散，并对生态系统造成有害影响。虽然许多入侵物种的影响都有详细记录，但我们缺乏预测生物抗性和入侵成功的工具。群落的生物抗性可能是决定入侵物种成功与否的一个特别重要的因素。本研究通过功能反应和猎物转换实验，利用三种本地且广泛分布的桡足类来量化对高度入侵的亚洲虎蚊 Aedes albopictus 和代表性本地蚊子 Culex pipiens 的捕食作用，以发展传统的生态概念来更好地理解和量化生物抗性。所有桡足类对入侵猎物的第二型功能反应都明显大于对类似的本地猎物的反应，这与更高的攻击和最大摄食率一致。所有捕食者对入侵物种都表现出明显的、不受频率影响的猎物偏好。根据这些结果，我们开发了一种新的生物抗性度量标准，该标准整合了捕食者数量反应的指标，揭示了捕食者之间不同的生物抗性潜力。我们的结果与生物抗性和入侵成功的实地模式一致，说明了我们方法的预测能力。因此，我们建议进一步发展传统的生态概念，如功能反应、数量反应和猎物转换，以评估生物抗性和入侵成功。
