Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science Adrian College Adrian, Michigan, United States
Background/Question/Methods
There is perhaps no threat as great as invasive species to biodiversity and ecosystem function. Their impacts are ubiquitous across North America, and remediation seldom has long-term efficacy. Understanding invasive species in the context of one another, predicting invasiveness, and placing them in the context of the community they are invading provides increased insight to the means of invasion. This study asks the degree to which invasive shrubs are functionally similar to one another, and the degree to which they are functionally similar to native understory species. We utilize a series of functional traits, occurrence and abundance data, and some demographic parameters from a series of forests in Southeast Michigan. The traits include components of the Leaf Economics Spectrum, wood and stomatal traits, and phenology. Both parametric statistics and niche overlap indices are applied to the problem.
Results/Conclusions
Findings suggest a strong similarlity among invasive shrubs in leaf economics spectrum parameters, and phenology, but not in stomatal or wood properties. They differ broadly in most of these traits from native shrub and understory tree species. These results, on the surface, would suggest a novel way of utilizing the understory for invasive species. However, a closer examination of the traits involved suggest they ought to be maladaptive in the understory environment, highlighting the need for a deeper consideration of the interaction of traits, niche, and demography.
