The success of alien species on oceanic islands is considered to be one of the classic observed patterns in ecology. Explanations for this pattern are based on lower species richness on islands and the lower resistance of species-poor communities to invaders, but this argument needs re-examination. The important difference between islands and mainland is in the size of species pools, not in local species richness; invasibility of islands should therefore be addressed in terms of differences in species pools. Here I examine whether differences in species pools can affect invasibility in a lottery model with pools of identical native and exotic species. While in a neutral model with all species identical, invasibility does not depend on the species pool, a model with non-zero variation in population growth rates predicts higher invasibility of communities of smaller pools. This is because of species sampling; drawing species from larger pools increases the probability that an assemblage will include fast growing species. Such assemblages are more likely to exclude random invaders. This constitutes a mechanism through which smaller species pools (such as those of isolated islands) can directly underlie differences in invasibility.

Institute of Botany Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic CZ 252 43 Průhonice; and Department of Botany Faculty of Science Charles University Benátská 2 CZ 128 01 Praha 2 Czech Republic

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Aarssen, L.W., Laird, R.A. & Pither, J. (2003). Is the productivity of vegetation plots higher or lower when there are more species? Variable predictions from interaction of the ‘sampling effect’ and ‘competitive dominance effect’ on the habitat templet. Oikos, 102, 427-432.

Bell, G. (2000). The distribution of abundance in neutral communities. Am. Nat., 155, 606-617.

Case, T.J. (1990). Invasion resistance arises in strongly interacting species-rich model competition communities. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 87, 9610-9614.

Case, T.J. (1996). Global patterns in establishment of exotic birds. Biol. Cons., 78, 69-96.

Chave, J. (2004). Neutral theory and community ecology. Ecol. Lett., 7, 241-253.

Courchamp, F., Chapuis, J.L. & Pascal, M. (2003). Mammal invaders on islands: impact, control and control impact. Biol. Rev., 78, 347-383.

Davis, M.A., Grime, J.P. & Thompson, K. (2000). Fluctuating resources in plant communities: a general theory of invasibility. J. Ecol., 88, 528-534.

Denslow, J.S. (2003). Weeds in paradise: thoughts on the invasibility of tropical islands. Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden, 90, 119-127.

Ewald, J. (2003). The calcareous riddle: Why are there so many calciphilous species in the central European flora? Folia Geobot., 38, 357-366.

Fargione, J., Brown, C.S. & Tilman, D. (2003). Community assembly and invasion: an experimental test of neutral versus niche processes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 100, 8916-8920.

Fridley, J.D., Brown, R.L. & Bruno, J.F. (2004). Null models of exotic invasion and scale-dependent patterns of native and exotic species richness. Ecology, 85, 3215-3222.

Gaston, K.J., Jones, A.G., Hanel, C. & Chown, S.L. (2003). Rates of species introduction to a remote oceanic island. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B-Biol. Sci., 270, 1091-1098.

Grace, J.B. (2001). Difficulties with estimating and interpreting species pools and the implications for understanding patterns of diversity. Folia Geobot., 36, 71-83.

Hector, A., Bazeley-White, E., Loreau, M., Otway, S. & Schmid, B. (2002 ). Overyielding in grassland communities: testing the sampling effect hypothesis with replicated biodiversity experiments. Ecol. Lett., 5, 502-511.

Herben, T., Mandák, B., Bímová, K. & Münzbergová, Z. (2004). Invasibility and species richness of a community: a neutral model and a survey of published data. Ecology, 85, 3223-3233.

Hubbell, S.P. (1979). Tree dispersion, abundance, and diversity in a tropical dry forest. Science, 203, 1299-1309.

Huston, M.A. (1997). Hidden treatments in ecological experiments: re-evaluating the ecosystem function of biodiversity. Oecologia, 108, 449-460.

Kennedy, T.A., Naeem, S., Howe, K.M., Knops, J.M.H., Tilman, D. & Reich, P. (2002). Biodiversity as a barrier to ecological invasion. Nature, 417, 636-638.

Law, R. & Morton, R.D. (1996). Permanence and the assembly of ecological communities. Ecology, 77, 762-775.

Lepš, J., Brown, V.K., Len, T.A.D., Gormsen, D., Hedlund, K., Kailová, J. et al. (2001). Separating the chance effect from other diversity effects in the functioning of plant communities. Oikos, 92, 123-134.

Levine, J.M. & D'Antonio, C.M. (1999). Elton revisited: a review of evidence linking diversity and invasibility. Oikos, 87, 15-26.

Levine, J.M., Kennedy, T. & Naeem, S. (2002). Neighborhood scale effects of species diversity on biological invasions and their relationship to community patterns. In: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning - Synthesis and Perspectives (eds Loreau, M., Naeema, S. & Inchausti, P.). Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. pp. 79-91.

Lonsdale, W.M. (1999). Global patterns of invasions and the concept of invasibility. Ecology, 80, 1522-1536.

MacArthur, R.H. & Wilson, E.O. (1967). The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, PA.

McCullagh, P. & Nelder, J.A. (1989). Generalized Linear Models. Chapman & Hall, New York.

Moore, J.L., Mouquet, N., Lawton, J.H. & Loreau, M. (2001). Coexistence, saturation and invasion resistance in simulated plant assemblages. Oikos, 94, 303-314.

Naeem, S., Knops, J.M.H., Tilman, D., Howe, K.M., Kennedy, T. & Gale, S. (2000). Plant diversity increases resistance to invasion in the absence of covarying factors. Oikos, 91, 97-108.

Pärtel, M., Zobel, M., Zobel, K. & van der Maarel, E. (1996). The species pool and its relation to species richness: evidence from Estonian plant communities. Oikos, 75, 111-117.

Polley, H.W., Wilsey, B.J. & Derner, J.D. (2003). Do species evenness and plant density influence the magnitude of selection and complementarity effects in annual plant species mixtures? Ecol. Lett., 6, 248-256.

Robinson, G.R., Quinn, J.F. & Stanton, M.L. (1995). Invasibility of experimental habitat islands in a california winter annual grassland. Ecology, 76, 786-794.

Rosenzweig, M. (1995). Species Diversity in Space and Time. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Sale, P.F. (1977). Maintenance of high diversity in coral reef fish communities. Am. Nat., 111, 337-359.

Sax, D.F. (2001). Latitudinal gradients and geographic ranges of exotic species: implications for biogeography. J. Biogeogr., 28, 139-150.

Shea, K. & Chesson, P. (2002). Community ecology theory as a framework for biological invasions. Trends Ecol. Evol., 17, 170-176.

Smith, M.D. & Knapp, A.K. (2001). Size of the local species pool determines invasibility of a C-4-dominated grassland. Oikos, 92, 55-61.

Smith, M.D., Wilcox, J.C., Kelly, T. & Knapp, A.K. (2004). Dominance not richness determines invasibility of tallgrass prairie. Oikos, 106, 253-262.

Sol, D. (2000). Are islands more susceptible to be invaded than continents? Birds say no. Ecography, 23, 687-692.

Tilman, D., Lehman, C.L., Thompson, K.T. (1997). Plant diversity and ecosystem productivity: theoretical considerations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 94, 1857-1861.

Wilson, J.B. & Anderson, B.J. (2001). Species-pool relations: like a wooden light bulb? Folia Geobot., 36, 35-44.

Zobel, M. (1997). The relative role of species pools in determining plant species richness: an alternative explanation of species coexistence? Trends Ecol. Evol., 12, 266-269.

Effects of land-use change and related pressures on alien and native subsets of island communities