Davidson Janette L, Shoemaker Lauren G
Botany Department, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA.
Ecology. 2023 Nov;104(11):e4162. doi: 10.1002/ecy.4162. Epub 2023 Oct 3.
While community synchrony is a key framework for predicting ecological constancy, the interplay between community synchrony and ecological invasions remains unclear. Yet the degree of synchrony in a resident community may influence its resistance and resilience to the introduction of an invasive species. Here we used a generalizable mathematical framework, constructed with a modified Lotka-Volterra competition model, to first simulate resident communities across a range of competitive strengths and species' responses to environmental fluctuations, which yielded communities that ranged from strongly synchronous to compensatory. We then invaded these communities at different timesteps with invaders of varying demographic traits, after which we quantified the resident community's susceptibility to initial invasion attempts (resistance) and the degree to which community synchrony was altered after invasion (resiliency of synchrony). We found that synchronous communities were not only more resistant but also more resilient to invasion than compensatory communities, likely due to stronger competition between resident species and thus lower cumulative abundances in compensatory communities, providing greater opportunities for invasion. The growth rate of the invader was most influenced by the resident and invader competition coefficients and the growth rate of the invader species. Our findings support prioritizing the conservation of compensatory and weakly synchronous communities which may be at increased risk of invasion.
虽然群落同步性是预测生态稳定性的关键框架，但群落同步性与生态入侵之间的相互作用仍不明确。然而，本地群落的同步程度可能会影响其对入侵物种引入的抵抗力和恢复力。在此，我们使用一个通用的数学框架，该框架基于修改后的洛特卡 - 沃尔泰拉竞争模型构建，首先模拟了一系列竞争强度和物种对环境波动响应下的本地群落，从而得到了从高度同步到补偿性的群落。然后，我们在不同时间步用具有不同种群特征的入侵者入侵这些群落，之后我们量化了本地群落对初始入侵尝试的易感性（抵抗力）以及入侵后群落同步性改变的程度（同步性恢复力）。我们发现，与补偿性群落相比，同步群落不仅对入侵具有更强的抵抗力，而且具有更强的恢复力，这可能是由于本地物种之间的竞争更强，因此补偿性群落中的累积丰度更低，从而为入侵提供了更多机会。入侵者的生长速率受本地物种与入侵者的竞争系数以及入侵物种的生长速率影响最大。我们的研究结果支持优先保护补偿性和弱同步群落，因为它们可能面临更高的入侵风险。
