Nature Communications上发表的一项研究表明,因气候变化而导致的环境可变性的增加可能会加快植物入侵等生态变化。这项工作意味着,因环境变化而发生的未来生物多样性变化可能被相当大地低估了。
环境变化有两种形式:平均条件的变化和环境可变性的变化。模型预测:环境可变性今后将会增加,导致极端气候事件以及其他后果。Oliver Bossdorf及其同事提出,环境可变性的这种增加还可能会加快生态变化。
该小组研究了世界上入侵性最强的植物物种之一——“日本虎杖”,发现营养物可变性的增加促进该植物的入侵和随后的扩散。入侵性“虎杖”最具支配性,引起更大变化,沿周期性洪水造成扰动和营养物波动的河流分布。由于极端气候事件的增加会增加发生这些洪水的可能性,所以Bossdorf等人的结果强烈表明,更大可变性会促进入侵性植物的进一步扩散。(生物谷Bioon.com)
Nature Communications, DOI:10.1038/ncomms2632
Environmental variability promotes plant invasion
Madalin Parepa,Markus Fischer& Oliver Bossdorf
Global environmental change not only entails changes in mean environmental conditions but also in their variability. Changes in climate variability are often associated with altered disturbance regimes and temporal patterns of resource availability. Here we show that increased variability of soil nutrients strongly promotes another key process of global change, plant invasion. In experimental plant communities, the success of one of the world's most invasive plants, Japanese knotweed, is two- to four-fold increased if extra nutrients are not supplied uniformly, but in a single large pulse, or in multiple pulses of different magnitudes. The superior ability to take advantage of variable environments may be a key mechanism of knotweed dominance, and possibly many other plant invaders. Our study demonstrates that increased nutrient variability can promote plant invasion, and that changes in environmental variability may interact with other global change processes and thereby substantially accelerate ecological change.