Invasive species interact with climatic variability to reduce success of natives

A novel mechanism to explain success of invasive herbaceous species at the expense of natives in eastern hardwood forests.

Exploring seed to seed effects for understanding invasive species success

Comparative approaches between native and invasive species germination are useful for understanding invasion success. We studied the role of invasive–native neighboring seeds on germination and early growth of different grasses. We focused on the non-native species Eragrostis plana Ness, the most invasive plant in southern Brazilian grasslands. A germination experiment was performed with three ...

Latitudinal Patterns in Phenotypic Plasticity and Fitness-Related Traits: Assessing the Climatic Variability Hypothesis (CVH) with an Invasive Plant Species

Phenotypic plasticity has been suggested as the main mechanism for species persistence under a global change scenario, and also as one of the main mechanisms that alien species use to tolerate and invade broad geographic areas. However, contrasting with this central role of phenotypic plasticity, standard models aimed to predict the effect of climatic change on species distributions do not allo...

Evolution of dispersal and life history interact to drive accelerating spread of an invasive species.

Populations on the edge of an expanding range are subject to unique evolutionary pressures acting on their life-history and dispersal traits. Empirical evidence and theory suggest that traits there can evolve rapidly enough to interact with ecological dynamics, potentially giving rise to accelerating spread. Nevertheless, which of several evolutionary mechanisms drive this interaction between e...

Reduced genetic variation and the success of an invasive species.

Despite the severe ecological and economic damage caused by introduced species, factors that allow invaders to become successful often remain elusive. Of invasive taxa, ants are among the most widespread and harmful. Highly invasive ants are often unicolonial, forming supercolonies in which workers and queens mix freely among physically separate nests. By reducing costs associated with territor...