title: Invasion in a heterogeneous world: resistance, coexistence or hostile takeover?
abstract: We review and synthesize recent developments in the study of the invasion of communities in heterogeneous environments, considering both the invasibility of the community and impacts to the community. We consider both empirical and theoretical studies. For each of three major kinds of environmental heterogeneity (temporal, spatial and invader-driven), we find evidence that heterogeneity is critical to the invasibility of the community, the rate of spread, and the impacts on the community following invasion. We propose an environmental heterogeneity hypothesis of invasions, whereby heterogeneity both increases invasion success and reduces the impact to native species in the community, because it promotes invasion and coexistence mechanisms that are not possible in homogeneous environments. This hypothesis could help to explain recent findings that diversity is often increased as a result of biological invasions. It could also explain the scale dependence of the diversity-invasibility relationship. Despite the undoubted importance of heterogeneity to the invasion of communities, it has been studied remarkably little and new research is needed that simultaneously considers invasion, environmental heterogeneity and community characteristics. As a young field, there is an unrivalled opportunity for theoreticians and experimenters to work together to build a tractable theory informed by data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. bamelbourne@ucdavis.edu
authors.forename: Brett A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Melbourne
authors.forename: Howard V
authors.initials: HV
authors.lastname: Cornell
authors.forename: Kendi F
authors.initials: KF
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Dugaw
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Elmendorf
authors.forename: Amy L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Freestone
authors.forename: Richard J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Harrison
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hastings
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Holland
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Holyoak
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lambrinos
authors.forename: Kara
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Moore
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yokomizo
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D017753:Ecosystem; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011157:Population Dynamics