Ecological and environmental context shape the differential effects of a facilitator in its native and invaded ranges

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3478. This is version 3 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Supplementary Files
Authors

Amelia Hesketh, Evangelina Schwindt, Christopher Harley

Abstract

Non-indigenous species often exhibit disproportionately strong negative effects in their introduced range compared to their native range, and much research has been devoted to understanding the role of shared evolutionary history, or lack thereof, in driving these differences. Less studied is whether non-indigenous species, particularly those that are important as facilitators in their native range, have persistent positive effects in their invaded range despite a lack of a shared evolutionary history with the invaded community. Here, we manipulated the density of a habitat-forming facilitator, the high intertidal acorn barnacle Balanus glandula, factorially with herbivore density in its native range (Bluestone Point, British Columbia, Canada) and invaded range (Punta Ameghino, Chubut Province, Argentina) to determine how this facilitator differentially affects associated species at these two locations. Given that high intertidal species at Punta Ameghino (PA) are evolutionarily naïve to barnacles, we predicted that the positive effects of B. glandula at PA would absent or weak compared to those at Bluestone Point (BP). However, we found that B. glandula had an equally positive effect on herbivore biomass at PA compared to BP, possibly because the moisture-retaining properties of barnacle bed habitats are particularly important in seasonally dry Patagonia. Barnacle presence indirectly decreased ephemeral algal cover at BP by increasing grazer pressure, but barnacles instead facilitated ephemeral algae at PA. In contrast, B. glandula increased perennial algal cover at BP, but generally decreased perennial algal cover at PA, likely due to differences in dominant algal morphology. These results suggest that shared evolutionary history is not a prerequisite for strong facilitation to occur, but rather that the nature and strength of novel species interactions are determined by the traits of associated species and the environment in which they occur.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/osf.io/wc9rx

Subjects

Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology

Keywords

Argentina, Balanus glandula, British Columbia, Facilitation, foundation species, herbivory, intertidal zone, non-indigenous species

Dates

Published: 2020-12-14 22:01

Last Updated: 2021-01-21 15:46

Older Versions
License

CC-By Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Data and Code Availability Statement:
Data currently available on request, but will be released to Figshare/Github after publication.