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Contrasting the effects of environment, dispersal and biotic interactions to explain the distribution of invasive plants in alpine communities

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Abstract

Despite considerable efforts devoted to investigate the community assembly processes driving plant invasions, few general conclusions have been drawn so far. Three main processes, generally acting as successive filters, are thought to be of prime importance. The invader has to disperse (1st filter) into a suitable environment (2nd filter) and succeed in establishing in recipient communities through competitive interactions (3rd filter) using two strategies: competition avoidance by the use of different resources (resource opportunity), or competitive exclusion of native species. Surprisingly, despite the general consensus on the importance of investigating these three processes and their interplay, they are usually studied independently. Here we aim to analyse these three filters together, by including them all: abiotic environment, dispersal and biotic interactions, into models of invasive species distributions. We first propose a suite of indices (based on species functional dissimilarities) supposed to reflect the two competitive strategies (resource opportunity and competition exclusion). Then, we use a set of generalised linear models to explain the distribution of seven herbaceous invaders in natural communities (using a large vegetation database for the French Alps containing 5,000 community-plots). Finally, we measure the relative importance of competitive interaction indices, identify the type of coexistence mechanism involved and how this varies along environmental gradients. Adding competition indices significantly improved model’s performance, but neither resource opportunity nor competitive exclusion were common strategies among the seven species. Overall, we show that combining environmental, dispersal and biotic information to model invasions has excellent potential for improving our understanding of invader success.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank T. Münkemüller for the thought-provoking discussions we have had. The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seven Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 Grant Agreement No. 281422 (TEEMBIO). LG, WT and SL acknowledge support from the French “Agence Nationale de la Recherche” under the SCION Project (ANR-08-PEXT-03).

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  1. Laure Gallien

    Present address: Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine (LECA), Univ. Grenoble Alpes, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Laure Gallien, Florent Mazel, Sébastien Lavergne, Julien Renaud & Wilfried Thuiller

  2. Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine (LECA), CNRS, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Laure Gallien, Florent Mazel, Sébastien Lavergne, Julien Renaud & Wilfried Thuiller

  3. Station Alpine Joseph Fourier, CNRS, Univ. Grenoble, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Rolland Douzet

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  1. Laure Gallien
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  2. Florent Mazel
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  3. Sébastien Lavergne
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  4. Julien Renaud
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  5. Rolland Douzet
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Correspondence to Laure Gallien.

Appendix: Test of spatial autocorrelation in the model residuals

Appendix: Test of spatial autocorrelation in the model residuals

The Moran’s I index scores and randomisation tests were performed with the R package spdep (Bivand 2014).

See Table 3.

Table 3 Tests of spatial autocorrelation of the model residuals (models including environmental, dispersal and biotic indices variables)
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Gallien, L., Mazel, F., Lavergne, S. et al. Contrasting the effects of environment, dispersal and biotic interactions to explain the distribution of invasive plants in alpine communities. Biol Invasions 17, 1407–1423 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-014-0803-1

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