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Community dominance patterns, not colonizer genetic diversity, drive colonization success in a test using grassland species

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Abstract

Successful colonization and/or invasion depend on characteristics of the invaded community and of the colonizer itself. Although many studies have documented a negative relationship between invasibility and biodiversity, the importance of community evenness is rarely examined and thus poorly understood. However, colonizer characteristics, including population genetic diversity, can also be important determinants of colonization success. We conducted a greenhouse experiment to assess the relative importance of community evenness and colonizer population genetic diversity using the weed Arabidopsis thaliana. We added seeds of A. thaliana (varying genetic diversity while keeping propagule pressure constant) to four types of constructed plant communities: those dominated by legumes, grasses or forbs, or with equal abundances of all three functional groups. We selected community members from a large pool of species to avoid the confounding effects of species identity. We also assessed the success of multiple seedbank colonizers to assess generality in the effects of our evenness treatments. Equal-abundance communities were no better at suppressing colonization than communities dominated by a single functional group. Forb-dominated communities suppressed A. thaliana colonization better than grass-dominated communities and suppressed seedbank colonizers better than legume-dominated communities. Equal-abundance communities were similar to forb-dominated ones in their eventual composition and in their invasibility, suggesting that forbs drove colonizer suppression in that treatment rather than high evenness itself. Most of our forbs grew quickly, yielding productive forb-dominated communities; this points to the importance of growth and colonization phenology in our system. A. thaliana genetic diversity did not affect colonization success, perhaps because strong interspecific competition substantially limited A. thaliana seedling emergence.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Jeff Ahern, Leila Bell, and Darren Li for assistance in the greenhouse, to Jennifer Rudgers for experimental design suggestions, and to two anonymous reviewers and the associate editor for suggestions that improved the manuscript. Support for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation (DEB-1146203).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice University, MS-170, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX, 77005, USA

    Stephen M. Hovick, Esra D. Gümüşer & Kenneth D. Whitney

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  1. Stephen M. Hovick
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  2. Esra D. Gümüşer
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  3. Kenneth D. Whitney
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Correspondence to Stephen M. Hovick.

Additional information

Stephen M. Hovick and Esra D. Gümüşer contributed equally to this study.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6 and Fig. 4.

Table 5 Arabidopsis thaliana accessions used as the source pool for genetic diversity treatments
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Table 6 Original set of species obtained for the experimental community evenness treatments
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Fig. 4
figure 4

Colonizer success varied in response to community composition (significant block effects), based on a Arabidopsis emergence, b non-Arabidopsis seedbank colonizer biomass and c non-Arabidopsis seedbank colonizer richness. Error bars ±1 SE

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Hovick, S.M., Gümüşer, E.D. & Whitney, K.D. Community dominance patterns, not colonizer genetic diversity, drive colonization success in a test using grassland species. Plant Ecol 213, 1365–1380 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-012-0097-2

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