Abstract
Invasive plants disrupt ecosystems from local to landscape scales. Reduction or reversal of spread is an important goal of many invasive plant management strategies, but few general guidelines exist on how to achieve this aim. We identified the main drivers of spread, and thus potential targets for management, using a spatially explicit simulation model tested on different life history categories in different spread and landscape scenarios. We used boosted regression trees to determine the parameters that most affected spread. Additionally, we analysed how spread reacted to changes in those parameters over a broad realistic range. From our results we deduce four simple management guidelines: (1) Manage dispersal if possible, as mean dispersal distance was an important driver of spread for all life history categories; (2) short bursts of rapid spread or more usual year on year spread can have different drivers, therefore managers need to decide what type of spread they want to slow; (3) efforts to manage spread will have variable outcomes due to interactions between, and non-linear responses to, key drivers of spread; and (4) the most useful demographic rates to target depend on dispersal ability, life history and how spread is measured. Fecundity was found to be important for driving spread only when reduced to low levels and particularly when the species was short lived. For longer lived species management should target survival, or age of maturity, especially when dispersal ability is limited.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Buckley YM, Briese DT, Rees M (2003) Demography and management of the invasive plant species Hypericum perforatum. II. Construction and use of an individual-based model to predict population dynamics and the effects of management strategies. J Appl Ecol 40:494–507
Buckley YM, Brockerhoff E, Langer L, Ledgard N, North H, Rees M (2005) Slowing down a pine invasion despite uncertainty in demography and dispersal. J Appl Ecol 42:1020–1030
Buckley YM, Anderson S, Catterall CP, Corlett RT, Engel T, Gosper CR, Nathan R, Richardson DM, Setter M, Spiegel O, Vivian-Smith G, Voigt FA, Weir JES, Westcott DA (2006) Management of plant invasions mediated by frugivore interactions. J Appl Ecol 43:848–857
Bullock JM, Clarke RT (2000) Long distance seed dispersal by wind: measuring and modelling the tail of the curve. Oecologia 124:506–521
Canty A, Ripley B (2010) Boot: bootstrap R (S-Plus) functions. R package version 1.2, p 42
Clark JS (1998) Why trees migrate so fast: confronting theory with dispersal biology and the paleorecord. Am Nat 152:204–224
Clark JS, Macklin E, Wood L (1998) Stages and spatial scales of recruitment limitation in southern Appalachian forests. Ecol Monogr 68:213–235
Clark JS, Lewis M, Horvath L (2001) Invasion by extremes: population spread with variation in dispersal and reproduction. Am Nat 157:537–554
Cowell FA (1995) Measuring inequality, 3rd edn. Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, London
Dauer JT, Mortensen DA, Humston R (2006) Controlled experiments to predict horseweed (Conyza canadensis) dispersal distances. Weed Sci 54:484–489
Davison AC, Hinkley D (1997) Bootstrap methods and their application. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Davies KW, Sheley RL (2007) A conceptual framework for preventing the spatial dispersal of invasive plants. Weed Sci 55:178–184
Elith J, Leathwick JR, Hastie T (2008) A working guide to boosted regression trees. J Anim Ecol 77:802–813
Fox JC, Buckley YM, Panetta FD, Bourgoin J, Pullar D (2009) Surveillance protocols for management of invasive plants: modelling Chilean needle grass (Nassella neesiana) in Australia. Divers Distrib 15:577–589
Friedman JH (2001) Greedy function approximation: a gradient boosting machine. Ann Stat 29:1189–1232
Gosper CR, Stansbury CD, Vivian-Smith G (2005) Seed dispersal of fleshy-fruited invasive plants by birds: contributing factors and management options. Divers Distrib 11:549–558
Grimm V, Berger U, Bastiansen F et al (2006) A standard protocol for describing individual-based and agent-based models. Ecol Model 198:115–126
Hastings A, Cuddington K, Davies KF, Dugaw CJ, Elmendorf S, Freestone A, Harrison S, Holland M, Lambrinos J, Malvadkar U, Melbourne BA, Moore K, Taylor C, Thomson D (2005) The spatial spread of invasions: new developments in theory and evidence. Ecol Lett 8:91–101
Higgins SI, Richardson DM (1998) Pine invasions in the southern hemisphere: modelling interactions between organism, environment and disturbance. Plant Ecol 135:79–93
Higgins SI, Richardson DM (1999) Predicting plant migration rates in a changing world: the role of long-distance dispersal. Am Nat 153:464–475
Hoffmann JH, Impson FAC, Moran VC, Donnelly D (2002) Biological control of invasive golden wattle trees (Acacia pycnantha) by a gall wasp, Trichilogaster sp. (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), in South Africa. Biol Control 25:64–73
Jongejans E, Shea K, Skarpaas O, Kelly D, Sheppard AW, Woodburn TL (2008) Dispersal and demography contributions to population spread of Carduus nutans in its native and invaded ranges. J Ecol 96:687–697
Kot M, Lewis MA, van den Driessche P (1996) Dispersal data and the spread of invading organisms. Ecol 77:2027–2042
Le Maitre DC, Krug RM, Hoffmann JH, Goydon AJ, Mgidi TN (2008) Hakea sericea: development of a model of the impacts of biological control on population dynamics and rates of spread of an invasive species. Ecol Model 212:342–358
Malanson GP, Cairns DM (1997) Effects of dispersal, population delays, and forest fragmentation on tree migration rates. Plant Ecol 131:67–79
Martinez I, Gonzalez-Taboada F (2009) Seed dispersal patterns in a temperate forest during a mast event: performance of alternative dispersal kernels. Oecologia 159:389–400
Moody ME, Mack RN (1988) Controlling the spread of plant invasions—the importance of nascent foci. J Appl Ecol 25:1009–1021
Neubert MG, Caswell H (2000) Demography and dispersal: calculation and sensitivity analysis of invasion speed for structured populations. Ecol 81:1613–1628
Pokorny ML, Krueger-Mangold JM (2007) Evaluating Montana’s dyer’s woad (Isatis tinctoria) cooperative eradication project. Weed Technol 21:262–269
R Development Core Team (2006) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL:http://www.R-project.org/
Ramula S, Knight TM, Burns JH, Buckley YM (2008) General guidelines for invasive plant management based on comparative demography of invasive and native plant populations. J Appl Ecol 45:1124–1133
Rees M, Paynter Q (1997) Biological control of Scotch broom: modelling the determinants of abundance and the potential impact of introduced insect herbivores. J Appl Ecol 34:1203–1221
Ridgway G (2010) gbm: generalized boosted regression models. R package version 1.6–3.1. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gbm
Shea K, Kelly D (1998) Estimating biocontrol agent impact with matrix models: Carduus nutans in New Zealand. Ecol Appl 8:824–832
Skarpaas O, Shea K (2007) Dispersal patterns, dispersal mechanisms, and invasion wave speeds for invasive thistles. Am Nat 170:421–430
Trzcinski MK, Reid ML (2008) Effect of management on the spatial spread of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) in Banff National Park. For Ecol Manage 256:1418–1426
With KA (1997) The application of neutral landscape models in conservation biology. Conserv Biol 11:1069–1080
With KA, King AW (1999) Dispersal success on fractal landscapes: a consequence of lacunarity thresholds. Landscape Ecol 14:73–82
Yokomizo H, Possingham HP, Thomas MB, Buckley YM (2009) Managing the impact of invasive species: the value of knowing the density-impact curve. Ecol Appl 19:376–386
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Condamine Alliance, Queensland Murray-Darling Committee, the Co-operative Research Centre for Australian Weed Management and the Australian Research Council (LP0667489). YMB is supported through an Australian Research Council Australian Research Fellowship (DP0771387). Thanks to Ric Colasanti for initial modelling ideas and discussion.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Coutts, S.R., van Klinken, R.D., Yokomizo, H. et al. What are the key drivers of spread in invasive plants: dispersal, demography or landscape: and how can we use this knowledge to aid management?. Biol Invasions 13, 1649–1661 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-010-9922-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-010-9922-5