Can you predict a successful invasive species before it invades?
Can you predict a successful invasive species before it invades?
Researchers found that plant species with certain traits, like longer bloom periods and efficient resource utilisation, are more likely to successfully thrive in foreign environments.
Galán Díaz and colleagues found that invasive species had other advantages.
Coloniser species displayed longer bloom periods, allowing them to be receptive to visitors at times that didn't only match pollinator activity in their home ranges.
These coloniser species brought novel traits into the recipient communities, such as annual life cycles and efficient resource-use strategies, highly beneficial in a context of farming, intense herbivory, long drought periods and high soil disturbance.
Both types of colonisers - invasive and naturalised - exhibit similar levels of climatic richness, but invasive species show a greater level of climatic diversity.
The botanists noticed some critical differences between coloniser and non-coloniser species regarding specific characteristics.
Using a kind of statistical analysis called 'random forest modelling', Galán Díaz and colleagues were able to predict whether a species is a non-coloniser or coloniser with an accuracy of over 73%. Variables, including climatic niche richness and the number of seed-dispersal mechanisms, were crucial to these predictions.
They conclude: "The knowledge derived from such studies may allow us to improve prediction models, identifying key species to monitor; this could prevent potential harmful impacts from coloniser species in invaded communities and reduce the investment necessary to target eradication measures."