Modelling the impacts of an invasive species across landscapes: a step-wise approach

Ward, Darren; Morgan, Fraser

doi:10.7717/peerj.435

Cited by 13 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Social invasive insects are particularly successful as a result of their ability to reach high densities, their social behaviour, and wide-ranging, generalist diets (Lester & Beggs, 2019;Ward & Morgan, 2014). In their native range, generalist insect predators play important roles in terrestrial food webs, as they feed across a range of trophic levels (Crowder & Snyder, 2010).…”

Section: Chapter 1: General Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nesting ecology, habitat preference, abundance and impacts of Polistes dominula in New Zealand

McGruddy¹

2021

Preprint

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Introduced wasps can have significant impacts on communities within their newly invaded range. A recent wasp introduction to New Zealand is the European paper wasp, Polistes dominula Christ, which was first observed in the Nelson-Tasman region in 2016. The ecology and behaviour of P. dominula was investigated, as well as the direct and indirect impacts of this wasp on local communities in Nelson. Aspects of nesting behaviour, habitat preference and abundance were studied with the intent to inform management decisions. The abundance and colony survival of P. dominula was greatest in suburban areas, where nests were predominantly built within anthropogenic structures. Colony survival of P. dominula was comparatively higher than for colonies of the longer established exotic congener Polistes chinensis Pérez. Neither Polistes species were found to nest within native or exotic forest sites, with translocated colonies of P. dominula unsuccessful within forest habitats. As a species that originates from a warmer climate, the lower temperatures in forests are likely a contributor to the inability of P. dominula to thrive in these areas. The impacts that newly invasive predators have on communities within their invaded range are often poorly understood. Following the arrival of P. dominula, I show data indicating that there have been substantial declines in the abundance of several local butterfly species in Nelson. The monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus Linnaeus was one of the species reported by residents to be in population decline. Field experiments found P. dominula to be a major cause of monarch caterpillar mortality. Caterpillar survival was the lowest in suburban areas, where the abundance of P. dominula was highest. Early instar caterpillars had comparatively higher mortality rates than late instar caterpillars, as the defensive behaviour of larger caterpillars had greater success against these wasps. Whilst P. dominula was the main driver behind caterpillar mortality throughout my experiments, the discovery of caterpillars by wasps appeared to happen by chance through direct contact between the wasp and their prey. There was also no evidence of nestmate recruitment by foraging wasps to sites where caterpillars were found. Predation has the capacity to not only impact prey populations, but through the suppression of herbivory, plants can indirectly benefit from the presence of predators. The presence of P. dominula was found to have strong, cascading effects on the milkweed host and food plant of D. plexippus. Milkweed fitness in areas populated by P. dominula was substantially greater than the fitness of plants in areas without this invasive predator. Plant growth and reproduction of milkweeds placed in areas where P. dominula were present, and able to predate upon caterpillars, were found to exhibit a similar amount of growth and flower production as netted control plants which excluded monarch caterpillars completely. The outcomes of this experiment suggest that P. dominula is strongly suppressing these herbivorous caterpillars. Overall, this thesis provides insight into the behaviour and ecology of P. dominula in New Zealand. Findings of this research suggest that this newly invasive wasp is having detrimental effects on local communities and that P. dominula should be controlled to reduce the impacts of this wasp on New Zealand’s ecosystems. Knowledge obtained in this study can direct conservation management strategies and aid in the development of effective control methods.

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Section: Chapter 1: General Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nesting ecology, habitat preference, abundance and impacts of Polistes dominula in New Zealand

McGruddy¹

2021

Preprint

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“…These assessments tend to be based on ecological features (e.g. [ 67 , 68 ], but our study suggests that vulnerability to biological invasions may also depend on the genetic structure of populations, the amount of genetic diversity and the gene flow patterns. The same factors could also be important for designing management plans for invasive species [ 69 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

A test of native plant adaptation more than one century after introduction of the invasive Carpobrotus edulis to the NW Iberian Peninsula

2021

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Background Although the immediate consequences of biological invasions on ecosystems and conservation have been widely studied, the long-term effects remain unclear. Invaders can either cause the extinction of native species or become integrated in the new ecosystems, thus increasing the diversity of these ecosystems and the services that they provide. The final balance of invasions will depend on how the invaders and native plants co-evolve. For a better understanding of such co-evolution, case studies that consider the changes that occur in both invasive and native species long after the introduction of the invader are especially valuable. In this work, we studied the ecological consequences of the more than one century old invasion of NW Iberia by the African plant Carpobrotus edulis. We conducted a common garden experiment to compare the reciprocal effects of competition between Carpobrotus plants from the invaded area or from the native African range and two native Iberian plant species (Artemisia crithmifolia and Helichrysum picardii) from populations exposed or unexposed to the invader. Results Exposure of H. picardii populations to C. edulis increased their capacity to repress the growth of Carpobrotus. The repression specifically affected the Carpobrotus from the invader populations, not those from the African native area. No effects of exposition were detected in the case of A. crithmifolia. C. edulis plants from the invader populations had higher growth than plants from the species' African area of origin. Conclusions We found that adaptive responses of natives to invaders can occur in the long term, but we only found evidence for adaptive responses in one of the two species studied. This might be explained by known differences between the two species in the structure of genetic variance and gene flow between subpopulations. The overall changes observed in the invader Carpobrotus are consistent with adaptation after invasion.

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“…For example, the line transect method is often used in flat or homogenous habitat areas because it is difficult to obtain a sufficient number of samples in mountains or forests. In recent years, with the progress of “3S” technologies—remote sensing, geographical information system (GIS), and global positioning system (GPS)—models have been developed to predict and evaluate the potential distribution areas of target species ( Araujo et al, 2011 ; Brown, 2014 ; Chitale, Behera & Roy, 2014 ; Elith & Leathwick, 2009 ; Fourcade et al, 2013 ; Vieilledent et al, 2013 ; Ward & Morgan, 2014 ). These quantitative models (e.g., species distribution models, SDMs) are valuable tools to assess habitat suitability for species at landscape scales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of potential habitat overlap between red deer (Cervus elaphus) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in northeastern China

2016

PeerJ

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Background. Understanding species distribution, especially areas of overlapping habitat between sympatric species, is essential for informing conservation through natural habitat protection. New protection strategies should simultaneously consider conservation efforts for multiple species that exist within the same landscape, which requires studies that include habitat overlap analysis.Methods. We estimated the potential habitat of cervids, which are typical ungulates in northern China, using the present locations of red deer (Cervus elaphus; N = 90) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus; N = 106) in a Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model. Our study area was a human-dominated landscape in the Tieli Forestry Bureau located at the southern slope of the Lesser Xing’an Mountains. We grouped 17 environmental predictor variables into five predictor classes (terrain, habitat accessibility, land cover, vegetation feature, and interference), which were used to build habitat suitability models.Results. Habitat accessibility and human interferences were found to have the strongest influence on habitat suitability among the five variable classes. Among the environmental factors, distance to farmland (26.8%), distance to bush-grass land (14.6%), elevation (13.5%), and distance to water source (12.2%) were most important for red deer, distance to farmland (22.9%), distance to settlement (21.4%), elevation (11.6%), and coverage of shrub-grass (8%) were most important for roe deer. Model accuracy was high for both species (mean area under the curve (AUC) = 0.936 for red deer and 0.924 for roe deer). The overlapping habitat comprised 89.93 km2 within the study area, which occupied 94% of potentially suitable habitat for red deer and 27% for roe deer.Conclusions. In terms of habitat suitability, roe deer showed greater selectivity than red deer. The overlapping habitat was mostly located in the eastern mountains. The southwestern plain was not a suitable habitat for deer because it was close to Tieli City. Regarding management measures, we suggest that priority protection should be given to the potential areas of overlapping deer habitats found in this study.

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Modelling the impacts of an invasive species across landscapes: a step-wise approach

Cited by 13 publications

References 29 publications

The nesting ecology, habitat preference, abundance and impacts of Polistes dominula in New Zealand

The nesting ecology, habitat preference, abundance and impacts of Polistes dominula in New Zealand

A test of native plant adaptation more than one century after introduction of the invasive Carpobrotus edulis to the NW Iberian Peninsula

Simulation of potential habitat overlap between red deer (Cervus elaphus) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in northeastern China

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