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Evidence of biotic resistance to invasions in forests of the Eastern USA

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Abstract

Context

Detecting biotic resistance to biological invasions across large geographic areas may require acknowledging multiple metrics of niche usage and potential spatial heterogeneity in associations between invasive and native species diversity and dominance.

Objectives

Determine (1) if native communities are resistant to biological invasions at macroscales; (2) the metrics that best quantify biotic resistance at these scales; and (3) the degree to which the direction and magnitude of invader-native associations vary with scale and/or location.

Methods

Using a mixed-effects modeling framework to account for potential sub-regional and cross-scale variability in invader-native associations, we modeled the species richness and cover of invasive plants in 42,626 plots located throughout Eastern USA forests in relationship to plot-level estimates of native tree biomass, species richness, and evolutionary diversity.

Results

We found (1) native tree biomass and evolutionary diversity, but not species richness, to be negatively associated with invader establishment and dominance, and thus indicative of biotic resistance; (2) evidence that evolutionary diversity limits invader dominance more than it does invader establishment; (3) evidence of greater invasion resistance in parts of the agriculturally-dominated Midwest and in and around the more-contiguous forests of the Appalachian Mountains; and (4) the magnitude to which native tree biomass and evolutionary diversity limit invasion varies across the ranges of these metrics.

Conclusions

These findings illustrate the improved understanding of biotic resistance to invasions that is gained by accounting for sub-regional variability in ecological processes, and underscores the need to determine the factors leading to spatial heterogeneity in biotic resistance.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the many FIA workers who collected the data used in this investigation; Beth Schulz, Andrew Gray, and Chris Witt for helping to compile the data; Johanna Desprez and Jarrod Doucette for GIS-related advice; and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms and suggestions on how to improve this paper. This research was supported by NSF Macrosystems Biology Grant # 1241932 and by a Research Joint Venture Agreement 13-JV-11330110-043 and Cost Share Agreement 14-CS-11330110-042 between the USDA Forest Service and North Carolina State University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Basil V. Iannone III & Songlin Fei

  2. Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    Kevin M. Potter

  3. Department of Statistics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Kelly-Ann Dixon Hamil, Whitney Huang & Hao Zhang

  4. USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    Qinfeng Guo

  5. USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Christopher M. Oswalt

  6. USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station, Saint Paul, MN, USA

    Christopher W. Woodall

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  1. Basil V. Iannone III
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  2. Kevin M. Potter
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  3. Kelly-Ann Dixon Hamil
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  4. Whitney Huang
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  5. Hao Zhang
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  6. Qinfeng Guo
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  7. Christopher M. Oswalt
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  8. Christopher W. Woodall
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  9. Songlin Fei
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Correspondence to Basil V. Iannone III.

Additional information

Special issue: Macrosystems ecology: Novel methods and new understanding of multi-scale patterns and processes.

Guest Editors: S. Fei, Q. Guo, and K. Potter.

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Table A2 (DOCX 20 kb)

Supplementary material 3

Table A3 (DOCX 16 kb)

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Iannone, B.V., Potter, K.M., Hamil, KA.D. et al. Evidence of biotic resistance to invasions in forests of the Eastern USA. Landscape Ecol 31, 85–99 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0280-7

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