Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 24, Issue 4, Pages 687-697Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.13685
Keywords
Biotic legacy; community ecology; community structure; disturbance history; disturbance regimes; invasion; reciprocal yield law; theoretical ecology
Categories
Funding
- NSF-NERC award [DEB-1556444]
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Disturbance is a key factor shaping ecological communities, with historical disturbance processes influencing future community structure. Research shows that past differences in disturbance history can affect invasion success and community outcomes.
Disturbance is a key factor shaping ecological communities, but little is understood about how the effects of disturbance processes accumulate over time. When disturbance regimes change, historical processes may influence future community structure, for example, by altering invasibility compared to communities with stable regimes. Here, we use an annual plant model to investigate how the history of disturbance alters invasion success. In particular, we show how two communities can have different outcomes from species introduction, solely due to past differences in disturbance regimes that generated different biotic legacies. We demonstrate that historical differences can enhance or suppress the persistence of introduced species, and that biotic legacies generated by stable disturbance history decay over time, though legacies can persist for unexpectedly long durations. This establishes a formal theoretical foundation for disturbance legacies having profound effects on communities, and highlights the value of further research on the biotic legacies of disturbance.
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