Favorable Climate Change Response Explains Non-Native Species' Success in Thoreau's Woods
Date
2010-1-26
Authors
Willis, Charles G.
Ruhfel, Brad R.
Primack, Richard B.
Miller-Rushing, Abraham J.
Losos, Jonathan B.
Davis, Charles C.
Version
OA Version
Citation
Willis, Charles G., Brad R. Ruhfel, Richard B. Primack, Abraham J. Miller-Rushing, Jonathan B. Losos, Charles C. Davis. "Favorable Climate Change Response Explains Non-Native Species' Success in Thoreau's Woods" PLoS ONE 5(1): e8878. (2010)
Abstract
Invasive species have tremendous detrimental ecological and economic impacts. Climate change may exacerbate species invasions across communities if non-native species are better able to respond to climate changes than native species. Recent evidence indicates that species that respond to climate change by adjusting their phenology (i.e., the timing of seasonal activities, such as flowering) have historically increased in abundance. The extent to which non-native species success is similarly linked to a favorable climate change response, however, remains untested. We analyzed a dataset initiated by the conservationist Henry David Thoreau that documents the long-term phenological response of native and non-native plant species over the last 150 years from Concord, Massachusetts (USA). Our results demonstrate that non-native species, and invasive species in particular, have been far better able to respond to recent climate change by adjusting their flowering time. This demonstrates that climate change has likely played, and may continue to play, an important role in facilitating non-native species naturalization and invasion at the community level.
Description
License
Willis et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.