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Acroptilon repens, an Asian invader, has stronger competitive effects on species from America than species from its native range

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Abstract

The ability to competitively suppress native species is key to successful invasion. Since invasions involve an increase in abundance or dominance of a species in its non-native range, competitive effects might be expected to be stronger in the non-native range of an invader; however, there have been few comparisons of the competitive effects of invasive plants on species from invaded ranges versus species from native ranges. We compared the competitive and allelopathic effects of Acroptilon repens on native North American species to effects on related species from the native range of Acroptilon in Uzbekistan. We also compared the competitive interactions among these North American and Eurasian species, in the absence of Acroptilon, examining the hypothesis that particular regional species pools may show differences in competitive ability. The results showed that Acroptilon had stronger competitive effects against native North American species than against species native to Uzbekistan. There was no difference in the competitive effects among Eurasians and North Americans. The effects of leachates collected from Acroptilon roots were weak but more negative on species from North America than on species from Uzbekistan. Our results suggest that inherently stronger competitive and allelopathic effects of Acroptilon on North American plants than on plants from its native range may contribute to its invasive success.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Aloviddin Khamraev for help with the seed collections, and Courtney Hall and David Hooper for help with the experiments. This research was supported by the Scientific Research Fund of Hongda Zhang, Sun Yat-sen University to GYN, the SCOPES program of the Swiss National Science Foundation to US, the National Natural Science Foundation of China to SLP, and SERDP of the Department of Defense’s (DoD), The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Center, the USDA-IPM and USDA-NRICP, the National Science Foundation, and the USFS to RMC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biological Sciences, The University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

    Guang-Yan Ni & Ragan M. Callaway

  2. State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol/School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, 510275, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Guang-Yan Ni & Shao-Lin Peng

  3. CABI Europe—Switzerland, Rue des Grillons 1, 2800, Delemont, Switzerland

    Urs Schaffner

  4. South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 510650, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Guang-Yan Ni

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  1. Guang-Yan Ni
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  2. Urs Schaffner
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  4. Ragan M. Callaway
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Correspondence to Guang-Yan Ni.

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Ni, GY., Schaffner, U., Peng, SL. et al. Acroptilon repens, an Asian invader, has stronger competitive effects on species from America than species from its native range. Biol Invasions 12, 3653–3663 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-010-9759-y

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