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Regional climate and local-scale biotic acceptance explain native-exotic richness relationships in Australian annual plant communities.

ABSTRACT: Native and exotic species richness is expected to be negatively related at small spatial scales where individuals interact, and positive at larger spatial scales as a greater variety of habitats are sampled. However, a range of native-exotic richness relationships (NERRs) have been reported, including positive at small scales and negative at larger scales. We present a hierarchical metacommunity framework to explain how contrasting NERRs may emerge across scales and study systems, and then apply this framework to NERRs in an invaded winter annual plant system in southwest Western Australia. We analysed NERRs at increasing spatial scales from neighbourhoods (0.09 m2) to communities (225 m2) to metacommunities (greater than 10 ha) within a multilevel structural equation model. In contrast to many previous studies, native and exotic richness were positively related at the neighbourhood scale and were not significantly associated at larger scales. Heterogeneity in soil surface properties was weakly, but positively, associated with native and exotic richness at the community scale. Metacommunity exotic richness increased strongly with regional temperature and moisture availability, but relationships for native richness were negative and much weaker. Thus, we show that neutral NERRs can emerge at larger scales owing to differential climatic filtering of native and exotic species pools.

SUBMITTER: Towers IR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6158526 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Regional climate and local-scale biotic acceptance explain native-exotic richness relationships in Australian annual plant communities.

Towers Isaac R IR Dwyer John M JM

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20180905 1886

Native and exotic species richness is expected to be negatively related at small spatial scales where individuals interact, and positive at larger spatial scales as a greater variety of habitats are sampled. However, a range of native-exotic richness relationships (NERRs) have been reported, including positive at small scales and negative at larger scales. We present a hierarchical metacommunity framework to explain how contrasting NERRs may emerge across scales and study systems, and then apply ...[more]

PMID: 30185637

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Project description:Support for the "biotic resistance hypothesis," that species-rich communities are more successful at resisting invasion by exotic species than are species-poor communities, has long been debated. It has been argued that native-exotic richness relationships (NERR) are negative at small spatial scales and positive at large scales, but evidence for the role of spatial scale on NERR has been contradictory. However, no formal quantitative synthesis has previously examined whether NERR is scale-dependent across multiple studies, and previous studies on NERR have not distinguished spatial grain and extent, which may drive very different ecological processes. We used a global systematic review and hierarchical mixed-effects meta-analysis to provide a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the patterns of NERR over a range of spatial grain sizes and spatial extents, based on 204 individual cases of observational (non-experimental) NERRs from 101 publications. We show that NERR was indeed highly scale dependent across studies and increased with the log of grain size. However, mean NERR was not negative at any grain size, although there was high heterogeneity at small grain sizes. We found no clear patterns of NERR across different spatial extents, suggesting that extent plays a less important role in determining NERR than does grain, although there was a complex interaction between extent and grain size. Almost all studies on NERR were conducted in North America, western Europe, and a few other regions, with little information on tropical or Arctic regions. We did find that NERR increased northward in temperate regions and also varied with longitude. We discuss possible explanations for the patterns we found, and caution that our results do not show that invasive species are benign or have no negative consequences for biodiversity preservation. This study represents the first global quantitative analysis of scale-based NERR, and casts doubt on the existence of an "invasion paradox" of negative NERR at small scales and positive correlations at large scales in non-experimental studies.

Project description:BackgroundDespite Stebbins' principle of the most efficient pollinator being proposed decades ago, the most important pollinators are still mainly identified using the frequency of visits to flowers. This shortcoming results in a gap between the characterization of the flower visitors of a plant species and a reliable estimation of the plant fitness consequences of the mutualistic interaction. The performance of a mutualistic visitor depends on its abundance, behaviour, effectiveness (pollen removal and deposition per unit time) and efficiency (seed set per unit time) conditioned by the temporal matching between pollinator activity and temporal patterns of maturation of the sexual functions of flowers. Although there have been recent attempts to provide a conceptual and methodological framework to characterize pollinators' performance, few have combined all key elements of visitors and plants to provide an accurate estimation of pollinators' performance under natural conditions.MethodsWe complement information on the flower biology and mating system of the sub-shrub Lepechinia floribunda (Lamiaceae) to provide a daily quantitative estimation of performance (effectiveness and efficiency) of the more abundant pollinators, i.e. native bumble-bees (Bombus spp.) and leafcutter bees (Megachile sp.), and the exotic honey-bee (Apis mellifera).Key resultsUnlike honey-bees or leafcutter bees, native bumble-bees matched the daily pattern of nectar production and stigma receptivity, and showed higher effectiveness and efficiency. Despite the overabundance of honey-bees, visits occurred mainly when stigmas were not receptive, thus reducing the honey-bees' overall performance.ConclusionsBumble-bees appear to be the most important pollinators and potential historical mediators of reproductive trait evolution in L. floribunda. Because the production of seeds by bumble-bees involved fewer pollen grains for plants and less investment in floral display than honey-bees, contemporary and expected changes in pollinator abundance may affect future L. floribunda floral evolution. If bumble-bees were to be further displaced by anthropogenic disturbance or by competition with honey-bees, their lower efficiency will select for a larger floral display increasing reproductive costs. This scenario may also impose selection to reduce dichogamy to match honey-bee foraging activity.

Project description:BackgroundThe perennial, Oryza rufipogon distributed from Asia to Australia and the annual O. meridionalis indigenous to Australia are AA genome species in the Oryza. However, recent research has demonstrated that the Australian AA genome perennial populations have maternal genomes more closely related to those of O. meridionalis than to those found in Asian populations of O. rufipogon suggesting that the Australian perennials may represent a new distinct gene pool for rice.ResultsAnalysis of an Oryza core collection covering AA genome species from Asia to Oceania revealed that some Oceania perennials had organellar genomes closely related to that of O meridionalis (meridionalis-type). O. rufipogon accessions from New Guinea carried either the meridionalis-type or rufirpogon-type (like O. rufipogon) organellar genomes. Australian perennials carried only the meridionalis-type organellar genomes when accompanied by the rufipogon-type nuclear genome. New accessions were collected to better characterize the Australian perennials, and their life histories (annual or perennial) were confirmed by field observations. All of the material collected carried only meridionalis-type organellar genomes. However, there were two distinct perennial groups. One of them carried an rufipogon-type nuclear genome similar to the Australian O. rufipogon in the core collection and the other carried an meridionalis-type nuclear genome not represented in the existing collection. Morphologically the rufipogon-type shared similarity with Asian O. rufipogon. The meridionalis-type showed some similarities to O. meridionalis such as the short anthers usually characteristic of annual populations. However, the meridionalis-type perennial was readily distinguished from O. meridionalis by the presence of a larger lemma and higher number of spikelets.ConclusionAnalysis of current accessions clearly indicated that there are two distinct types of Australian perennials. Both of them differed genetically from Asian O. rufipogon. One lineage is closely related to O. meridionalis and another to Asian O. rufipogon. The first was presumed to have evolved by divergence from O. meridionalis becoming differentiated as a perennial species in Australia indicating that it represents a new gene pool. The second, apparently derived from Asian O. rufipogon, possibly arrived in Australia later.

Dataset Information

Regional climate and local-scale biotic acceptance explain native-exotic richness relationships in Australian annual plant communities.

Publications

Regional climate and local-scale biotic acceptance explain native-exotic richness relationships in Australian annual plant communities.

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