Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species

Invasive species are leading drivers of environmental change. Their impacts are often linked to their population size, but surprisingly little is known about how frequently they achieve high abundances. A nearly universal pattern in ecology is that species are rare in most locations and abundant in...

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Main Authors:	Hansen, Gretchen J. A., Vander Zanden, M. Jake, Blum, Michael J., Clayton, Murray K., Hain, Ernie F., Hauxwell, Jennifer, Izzo, Marit, Kornis, Matthew S., McIntyre, Peter B., Mikulyuk, Alison, Nilsson, Erika, Olden, Julian D., Papeş, Monica, Sharma, Sapna
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3806751/

id	pubmed-3806751
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-38067512013-11-05 Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species Hansen, Gretchen J. A. Vander Zanden, M. Jake Blum, Michael J. Clayton, Murray K. Hain, Ernie F. Hauxwell, Jennifer Izzo, Marit Kornis, Matthew S. McIntyre, Peter B. Mikulyuk, Alison Nilsson, Erika Olden, Julian D. Papeş, Monica Sharma, Sapna Research Article Invasive species are leading drivers of environmental change. Their impacts are often linked to their population size, but surprisingly little is known about how frequently they achieve high abundances. A nearly universal pattern in ecology is that species are rare in most locations and abundant in a few, generating right-skewed abundance distributions. Here, we use abundance data from over 24,000 populations of 17 invasive and 104 native aquatic species to test whether invasive species differ from native counterparts in statistical patterns of abundance across multiple sites. Invasive species on average reached significantly higher densities than native species and exhibited significantly higher variance. However, invasive and native species did not differ in terms of coefficient of variation, skewness, or kurtosis. Abundance distributions of all species were highly right skewed (skewness>0), meaning both invasive and native species occurred at low densities in most locations where they were present. The average abundance of invasive and native species was 6% and 2%, respectively, of the maximum abundance observed within a taxonomic group. The biological significance of the differences between invasive and native species depends on species-specific relationships between abundance and impact. Recognition of cross-site heterogeneity in population densities brings a new dimension to invasive species management, and may help to refine optimal prevention, containment, control, and eradication strategies. Public Library of Science 2013-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3806751/ /pubmed/24194883 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077415 Text en © 2013 Hansen et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Hansen, Gretchen J. A. Vander Zanden, M. Jake Blum, Michael J. Clayton, Murray K. Hain, Ernie F. Hauxwell, Jennifer Izzo, Marit Kornis, Matthew S. McIntyre, Peter B. Mikulyuk, Alison Nilsson, Erika Olden, Julian D. Papeş, Monica Sharma, Sapna
spellingShingle	Hansen, Gretchen J. A. Vander Zanden, M. Jake Blum, Michael J. Clayton, Murray K. Hain, Ernie F. Hauxwell, Jennifer Izzo, Marit Kornis, Matthew S. McIntyre, Peter B. Mikulyuk, Alison Nilsson, Erika Olden, Julian D. Papeş, Monica Sharma, Sapna Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species
author_facet	Hansen, Gretchen J. A. Vander Zanden, M. Jake Blum, Michael J. Clayton, Murray K. Hain, Ernie F. Hauxwell, Jennifer Izzo, Marit Kornis, Matthew S. McIntyre, Peter B. Mikulyuk, Alison Nilsson, Erika Olden, Julian D. Papeş, Monica Sharma, Sapna
author_sort	Hansen, Gretchen J. A.
title	Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species
title_short	Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species
title_full	Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species
title_fullStr	Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species
title_full_unstemmed	Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species
title_sort	commonly rare and rarely common: comparing population abundance of invasive and native aquatic species
description	Invasive species are leading drivers of environmental change. Their impacts are often linked to their population size, but surprisingly little is known about how frequently they achieve high abundances. A nearly universal pattern in ecology is that species are rare in most locations and abundant in a few, generating right-skewed abundance distributions. Here, we use abundance data from over 24,000 populations of 17 invasive and 104 native aquatic species to test whether invasive species differ from native counterparts in statistical patterns of abundance across multiple sites. Invasive species on average reached significantly higher densities than native species and exhibited significantly higher variance. However, invasive and native species did not differ in terms of coefficient of variation, skewness, or kurtosis. Abundance distributions of all species were highly right skewed (skewness>0), meaning both invasive and native species occurred at low densities in most locations where they were present. The average abundance of invasive and native species was 6% and 2%, respectively, of the maximum abundance observed within a taxonomic group. The biological significance of the differences between invasive and native species depends on species-specific relationships between abundance and impact. Recognition of cross-site heterogeneity in population densities brings a new dimension to invasive species management, and may help to refine optimal prevention, containment, control, and eradication strategies.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3806751/
_version_	1612020389525848064

Commonly Rare and Rarely Common: Comparing Population Abundance of Invasive and Native Aquatic Species

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