A test of Darwin's naturalization conundrum in birds reveals enhanced
invasion success in presence of close relatives
- Daniel Sol,
- Joan Garcia-Porta,
- César González-Lagos,
- Alex Pigot,
- Joseph Tobias,
- Christopher Trisos
Joan Garcia-Porta
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Centre de Recerca Ecologica i Aplicacions Forestals
Author ProfileAlex Pigot
University College London Division of Biosciences
Author ProfileChristopher Trisos
University of Maryland at College Park
Author ProfileAbstract
Despite biological invasions are one of the main environmental problems
of the twenty-first century, there is still no theoretical or empirical
agreement on whether a high phylogenetic relatedness between exotic and
native species positively or negatively affect invasion success. To
resolve this conundrum, it has been proposed that the effect might be
scale-dependent, being negative at smaller spatial scales and positive
at larger scales. Here we show that this scale-dependent pattern may be
a sampling artefact associated with species-area effects and a
non-random pattern of species introductions. We support this conclusion
with simulations and empirical data on invaded and non-invaded avian
communities in regions from five continents. We further show that at
smaller-scales ---where these artifacts are negligible--- invasion
success generally increases with the presence of closely-related
species, but that predictive accuracy largely depends on considering the
influence of human-related disturbances in facilitating invasions.Mar 2022Published in Ecology Letters volume 25 issue 3 on pages 661-672. 10.1111/ele.13899