INVESTIGADORES
HIERRO jose luis
artículos
Título:
Are Local Filters Blind to Provenance? Ant Seed Predation Suppresses Exotic Plants More than Natives
Autor/es:
DEAN PEARSON; ICASATTI, NADIA S.; JOSÉ L. HIERRO; BENJAMIN J. BIRD
Revista:
PLOS ONE
Editorial:
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
Referencias:
Lugar: San Francisco; Año: 2014 p. 1 - 11
ISSN:
1932-6203
Resumen:
The question of whether species? origins influence invasion outcomes has been a point of substantial debate in invasion
ecology. Theoretically, colonization outcomes can be predicted based on how species? traits interact with community filters,
a process presumably blind to species? origins. Yet, exotic plant introductions commonly result in monospecific plant
densities not commonly seen in native assemblages, suggesting that exotic species may respond to community filters
differently than natives. Here, we tested whether exotic and native species differed in their responses to a local community
filter by examining how ant seed predation affected recruitment of eighteen native and exotic plant species in central
Argentina. Ant seed predation proved to be an important local filter that strongly suppressed plant recruitment, but ants
suppressed exotic recruitment far more than natives (89% of exotic species vs. 22% of natives). Seed size predicted ant
impacts on recruitment independent of origins, with ant preference for smaller seeds resulting in smaller seeded plant
species being heavily suppressed. The disproportionate effects of provenance arose because exotics had generally smaller
seeds than natives. Exotics also exhibited greater emergence and earlier peak emergence than natives in the absence of
ants. However, when ants had access to seeds, these potential advantages of exotics were negated due to the filtering bias
against exotics. The differences in traits we observed between exotics and natives suggest that higher-order introduction
filters or regional processes preselected for certain exotic traits that then interacted with the local seed predation filter. Our
results suggest that the interactions between local filters and species traits can predict invasion outcomes, but
understanding the role of provenance will require quantifying filtering processes at multiple hierarchical scales and
evaluating interactions between filters.