title: Environmental conditions and community evenness determine the outcome of biological invasion.
abstract: Biological invasion is widely studied, however, conclusions on the outcome of this process mainly originate from observations in systems that leave a large number of experimental variables uncontrolled. Here using a fully controlled system consisting of assembled bacterial communities, we evaluate the degree of invasion and the effect on the community functionality in relation to the initial community evenness under specific environmental stressors. We show that evenness influences the level of invasion and that the introduced species can promote functionality under stress. The evenness-invasibility relationship is negative in the absence and neutral in the presence of stress. Under these conditions, the introduced species is able to maintain the functionality of uneven communities. These results indicate that communities, initially having the same genetic background, in the presence of the same invader, react in a different way with respect to invasibility and functionality depending on specific environmental conditions and community evenness.
authors: Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.
authors: Karen
authors: K
authors: De Roy
authors: Massimo
authors: M
authors: Marzorati
authors: Andrea
authors: A
authors: Negroni
authors: Olivier
authors: O
authors: Thas
authors: Annalisa
authors: A
authors: Balloi
authors: Fabio
authors: F
authors: Fava
authors: Willy
authors: W
authors: Verstraete
authors: Daniele
authors: D
authors: Daffonchio
authors: Nico
authors: N
authors: Boon
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects; D002244:Carbon / Q000494:pharmacology; D017753:Ecosystem; D058865:Introduced Species; D008954:Models, Biological; D054712:Salinity; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon