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Invasive non-native plants have a greater effect on neighbouring natives than other non-natives

Nature Plants volume 2, Article number: 16134 (2016) Cite this article

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Abstract

Human activity is creating a global footprint by changing the climate, altering habitats and reshuffling the distribution of species. The movement of species around the globe has led to the naturalization and accumulation of multiple non-native species within ecosystems, which is frequently associated with habitat disturbance and changing environmental conditions. However, interactions among species will also influence community composition, but little is known about the full range of direct and indirect interactions among native and non-native species. Here, we show through a meta-analysis of 1,215 pairwise plant interactions between 274 vascular plant species in 21 major habitat types that interactions between non-native plants are asymmetrical with interactions between non-native and native plants. Non-native plants were always bad neighbours, but the negative effect of non-natives on natives was around two times greater than the effect of non-natives on other non-natives. In contrast, the performance of non-native plants was five times higher in the presence of a neighbouring native plant species than in the presence of a neighbouring non-native plant species. Together, these results demonstrate that invaded plant communities may accumulate additional non-native species even if direct interactions between non-natives species are negative. Put another way, invasions may be more likely to lead to more invasions, requiring more active management of ecosystems by promoting native species restoration to undermine invasive positive feedback and to assist native species recovery in invaded ecosystems.

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Figure 1: Extension of non-native plant interaction theory.
Figure 2: Plant interactions by species origin.
Figure 3: Effects of nitrogen-fixing neighbours on plant interactions.
Figure 4: Indirect effect of herbivores on plant interactions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Smith, M. Rodriguez-Cabal, D. Maynard and N. Sanders and four anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University, 195 Prospect Street, New Haven, 06511, Connecticut, USA

    Sara E. Kuebbing

  2. Grupo de Ecologia de Invasiones, INIBIOMA, CONICET, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Quintral 1250, San Carlos de Bariloche CP 8400, Argentina

    Martin A. Nuñez

Authors
  1. Sara E. Kuebbing
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  2. Martin A. Nuñez
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Contributions

S.E.K. and M.A.N. developed the approach and initial idea for the research. S.E.K. extracted and analysed the data, and led the writing of the manuscript. M.A.N. contributed substantially to the interpretation of the results and to the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sara E. Kuebbing.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1-3, Supplementary Extended Data Figures 1-3, Supplementary Equation 1. (PDF 1666 kb)

Supplementary Extended Data File.

Observation row of data. (CSV 349 kb)

MetaData

Supplementary Extended Data Column Descriptions. (XLSX 12 kb)

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Kuebbing, S., Nuñez, M. Invasive non-native plants have a greater effect on neighbouring natives than other non-natives. Nature Plants 2, 16134 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.134

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