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Competitive naïveté between a highly successful invader and a functionally similar native species

  • Behavioral ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Naïveté can occur within any novel antagonistic interaction, and competitive forces play a fundamental role in shaping community structure, yet competitive naïveté has received very little attention in the literature to date. Naïveté towards a novel competitor is unlikely to result in immediate mortality, but could potentially affect access to resources and hence population growth and survival. In cases where only one species (either native or alien) remains naïve to the other, the species that recognizes the other will gain advantage, with implications for both the persistence of the native species and the establishment and spread of the invasive. The invasive black rat (Rattus rattus) has spread throughout many coastal areas of Australia, and competes with the native bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) wherever they coexist. As these rats have now been interacting for approximately 200 years, and multi-species rodent communities generally maintain their structure through olfactory communication, our aim was to determine whether these two very closely related species recognize one another’s odors and use them to mediate their interactions. We used remote-sensing cameras deployed in single- and mixed-species sites to record the behavioral responses of each species to conspecific, heterospecific and control odors. Black rats investigated bush rat odors but not vice versa, suggesting that bush rats may remain naïve towards their new competitor. Highly successful invaders such as black rats may possess traits such as broad recognition templates and rapid learning capabilities that contribute to their ongoing success in invading new environments.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by a grant from the Hermon Slade Foundation (HSF10-10). All experiments comply with the current laws of the country in which the experiments were performed, and were performed in accordance with animal ethics requirements as administered by the University of New South Wales animal ethics committee. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biological, Earth and Environment Sciences, Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Stephen J. Heavener, Alexandra J. R. Carthey & Peter B. Banks

  2. School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Alexandra J. R. Carthey & Peter B. Banks

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Department of Environment and Geography, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Alexandra J. R. Carthey

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  1. Stephen J. Heavener
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  2. Alexandra J. R. Carthey
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  3. Peter B. Banks
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Correspondence to Alexandra J. R. Carthey.

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Communicated by Janne Sundell.

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Heavener, S.J., Carthey, A.J.R. & Banks, P.B. Competitive naïveté between a highly successful invader and a functionally similar native species. Oecologia 175, 73–84 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-013-2874-6

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