Exotic species invasions undermine regional functional diversity of freshwater fish.
Sci Rep
; 9(1): 17921, 2019 11 29.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31784553
ABSTRACT
Exotic species invasions often result in native biodiversity loss, i.e. a lower taxonomic diversity, but current knowledge on invasions effects underlined a potential increase of functional diversity. We thus explored the connections between functional diversity and exotic species invasions, while accounting for their environmental drivers, using a fine-resolution large dataset of Mediterranean stream fish communities. While functional diversity of native and exotic species responded similarly to most environmental constraints, we found significant differences in the effects of altitude and in the different ranking of constraints. These differences suggest that invasion dynamics could play a role in overriding some major environmental drivers. Our results also showed that a lower diversity of ecological traits in communities (about half of less disturbed communities) corresponded to a high invasion degree, and that the exotic component of communities had typically less diverse ecological traits than the native one, even when accounting for stream order and species richness. Overall, our results suggest that possible outcomes of severe exotic species invasions could include a reduced functional diversity of invaded communities, but analyzing data with finer ecological, temporal and spatial resolutions would be needed to pinpoint the causal relationship between invasions and functional diversity.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Especies Introducidas
/
Peces
Tipo de estudio:
Risk_factors_studies
Límite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Rep
Año:
2019
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Italia