Traits and impacts of introduced species: a quantitative review of meta-analyses

Aquatic invasive species: introduction to the Special Issue and dynamics of public interest

“…Although increased plasticity, competitive ability and enemy release are not consistently supported for nonnative species in general (Boltovskoy et al, 2021), they are more likely to come into play for high-impact invaders. Phenotypic plasticity may confer a greater competitive advantage to high-impact AIS, particularly in a changing climate.…”

“…Although it is widely believed that non-native species have overwhelmingly negative effects on recipient communities and ecosystems, a review of 71 metaanalyses, which included 4822 unique primary sources on aquatic and terrestrial invaders, demonstrated that non-native species more frequently have non-significant and mixed effects on native communities (Boltovskoy et al, 2021). Because the underlying meta-analyses consider all non-native species, these findings may underestimate effects of high-impact invasives, but even for those species, there was often a mix of significant and non-significant effects (Boltovskoy et al, 2021). However, cumulative impacts of some marine AIS may have been underestimated in the underlying studies because meta-analyses tend to aggregate impacts across important opposing processes (Thomsen 2020).…”

“…As mostly inadvertent large-scale experiments, invasive species (i.e., established and spreading non-native species, e.g., Havel et al, 2015) have boosted many fields of ecological research (e.g., Sax et al, 2005). Invasive species have also defied many elegant ecological theories (Boltovskoy et al, 2021), underscoring the limited power of the reductionistic approach to complex ecological systems and the limited success of generalization of patterns across habitats and species. If a single novel species can trigger such extreme community re-organization and loss of ecosystem services on landscape scales (e.g., Ehrenfeld, 2010;Gallardo et al, 2016), what does this tell us about functional extinction of multiple species, all the disappearing threads in ecological networks?…”

“…Several recent reviews provide a good starting point to explore various aspects of aquatic invasive species (AIS) research including impacts modeling (Guy-Haim et al, 2018;Anton et al, 2019;Corrales et al, 2020;Thomsen 2020), traits and impacts (Boltovskoy et al, 2021), invasion syndromes (Novoa et al, 2020), first record rates (Seebens et al, 2017), effects on endangered and threatened species (Dueñas et al, 2018), food web effects (Gallardo et al, 2016;David et al, 2017), role of parsites in marine invasions (Goedknegt et al, 2016), impacts on ecosystem functions and services (Flood et al, 2020), management and eradiation (Simberloff, 2021), social perception (Kapitza et al, 2019) and policy issues (Geller et al, 2020).…”

Ventajas y límites de la variabilidad morfofisiológica para el establecimiento, la colonización y la expansión del bivalvo invasor Limnoperna fortunei en Sudamérica

“…Una vez introducida y establecida una especie exótica, el proceso de colonización de un nuevo ambiente es un fenómeno complejo que depende de múltiples factores antrópicos y ambientales, así como de características intrínsecas de la especie introducida (Blackburn, et al, 2011). Aunque realizar generalizaciones acerca de estas características resulta difícil pues su valor parece relativo al contexto ambiental (Boltovskoy, et al, 2020), la variabilidad genética y fenotípica puede determinar la extensión y diversidad de ambientes a colonizar (Sax, et al, 2007;Kelley, 2014). Sin embargo, también se ha cuestionado el valor mismo de la diversidad genética y plasticidad fenotípica para las especies invasoras (Drown, et al, 2011;Davidson, et al, 2011), dada la existencia de exitosos invasores resistentes a ambientes extremos Rabushko, et al, 2020), pero con muy baja variabilidad genética y plasticidad fenotípica, aparentemente similar a la de especies nativas coexistentes (Levri, et al, 2014).…”