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The role of plant species size in invasibility: a field experiment

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Abstract

Large plant species self-thin to disproportionately lower densities than smaller plant species, and therefore may leave more patches of unused space suitable for invasion. Using experimental monocultures of 11 old-field perennial plant species differing in maximum size, as well as mixtures composed of all monoculture species, we tested our primary hypothesis that monocultures of larger species will be more susceptible to natural invasion. After 3 years, monocultures of larger species were invaded by a significantly greater number of species, and more ramets, from the surrounding vegetation. Invading plant species were significantly smaller than the monoculture species being invaded, suggesting that smaller plant species may be better invaders. Thus, we quantified a trade-off between species size, which is frequently associated with increased competitive ability for light, and invasibility, suggesting one reason why large and small species coexist in virtually all plant communities. Although we expected that invasion would enhance biomass production by more fully capturing available resources, we found that the most highly invaded plots of each species produced significantly less biomass. This suggests that increased diversity resulting from invasion did not result in complementary resource use. Mixture plots containing all experimental species did not admit a significantly different number of invading ramets or species than most monocultures, indicating no obvious role for diversity in resistance to invasion, or complementary resource use. Our results suggest that relatively large species may be limited in their capacity to competitively exclude other, smaller species from communities because pure stands of the former are more susceptible to invasion by the latter.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Joyce Chau, Ryan Ouckama, Michael Burtnyk, Jennifer Waugh, Andrew Stevens, Lisa Duke, Jon Aarssen, Marina Neytcheva and Corinne Daly for field help, and Scott Wilson, Andrew MacDougall, John Silander, and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a research grant to L. W. A. and a postgraduate scholarship to B. S. S., and by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to B. S. S.

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  1. Brandon S. Schamp

    Present address: Department of Biology, Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, ON, P6A 2G4, Canada

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  1. Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada

    Brandon S. Schamp & Lonnie W. Aarssen

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  1. Brandon S. Schamp
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Correspondence to Brandon S. Schamp.

Additional information

Communicated by John Silander.

Electronic supplementary material

442_2009_1499_MOESM1_ESM.tif

Figure S1. Frequency histograms illustrating the size, in aboveground dry mass (g) of all 17 experimental species initially selected for this experiment in relation to the distribution of species dry mass in a nearby old field (log transformed), from which experimental species were selected (a). In panel b, we show the same frequency histogram of old-field plant species with the 11 experimental species that remained in our study after disturbance by deer. Note that species in the old-field, as well as in the experiment, span several orders of magnitude inmaximum biomass. 119x171mm (300 x 300 DPI) (TIFF 1700 kb)

442_2009_1499_MOESM2_ESM.tif

Figure S2. Box plots depicting the number of ramets (experimental species and others) invading monoculture and mixture treatment plots from the surrounding grassland community (a), and the number of species (experimental species and other) invading all treatments (b). Monoculture treatments are presented in order of increasing maximum species size (biomass) from left to right. Summary statistics highlight the results of ANOVA for both analyses, and letters at the bottom of each panel distinguish treatments that were significantly different according to a Tukey-Kramer multiple comparisons test (α=0.05). Treatments that share the same letter are not statistically different. 110x183mm (300 x 300 DPI) (TIFF 741 kb)

442_2009_1499_MOESM3_ESM.jpg

Figure S3. Contrasting communities depicting: (a) a large species monoculture with several small individuals that are incapable of reaching reproductive maturity; and (b) a comparable community but with the small pre-reproductive individuals of community (a) replaced by reproductive individuals of additional species with smaller minimum resource requirements. Predictions for relative differences between communities (a) and (b) are shown in (c) – (f): i.e., biomass production (c) need not be different for the two communities (which is supported by data from the current study), while in community (b), overall seed production (and hence local seed rain) of resident species is expected to be higher (d), and plant mortality rate (assuming perennial plant communities) is expected to be lower (e), thus reducing for community (b), both the available space for non-resident colonization and the frequency at which resources are freed-up for potential invaders (f) (See text). 237x141mm (150 x 150 DPI) (JPG 127 kb)

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Schamp, B.S., Aarssen, L.W. The role of plant species size in invasibility: a field experiment. Oecologia 162, 995–1004 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-009-1499-2

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