Invasive plant species can enhance coastal ecosystems

[Judi Lynn]

PUBLIC RELEASE: 17-JUL-2017

Better to have non-native habitat than none at all

DUKE UNIVERSITY




CAPTION
A new study finds invasive plant species, such as nonnative seaweed, can provide vital benefits including storm protection and food production in coastal ecosystems where native habitats have declined.
CREDIT
Aaron Ramus, Duke University


DURHAM, N.C. - Invasive plant species can be a source of valuable ecosystem functions where native coastal habitats such as salt marshes and oyster reefs have severely declined, a new study by scientists at Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Wilmington finds.

"With the progressive decline of coastal habitats worldwide, our findings suggest it's better to have a non-native habitat than no habitat at all," said Aaron Ramus, a PhD student at UNC Wilmington and former Bookhout Research Scholar at the Duke University Marine Laboratory, who led the research.

"There's a good chance that many invaders don't have the negative effects that we often think they do," Ramus said.

On otherwise barren mudflats, habitat-forming invasive species such as nonnative seaweed can offset the loss of foundation species and provide vital ecosystem services, such as storm protection and food production, on which nearly half the human population depends.

More:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-07/du-ips071317.php

[msongs]

1. one species' decline due to natural causes is another species' opportunity nt

[NickB79]

2. As a longtime invasive species fighter, I've been taking a second look at my habits in recent years

Ever since I was a kid on my parent's farm, I was interested in environmental protection. I loved watching songbirds at the birdfeeders, so when I read about how house sparrows, starlings and pigeons were non-native and a threat to native birds, I promptly picked my pellet gun and got to work exterminating them.

When I read that buckthorn and Tatarian honeysuckle were invasive shrubs that threatened our woodlands, I grabbed a handsaw (and later a chainsaw when I was a teenager) and got to work cutting them down and spraying the stumps with Round Up.

When I read about the damage feral cats do to native small game and songbirds, I started live trapping them and bringing them to the local humane shelter to get them off my property.

All this time, I kept planting native trees, shrubs and flowers, mostly grown from locally collected seed, thinking I could undo the damage 150 years of human settlement had done to the area.

But now, in the face of rapidly advancing, potentially catastrophic climate change, I've started to think what kind of habitat I should truly be trying to rebuild. Minnesota has already warmed 1-2 degrees in the past century, and plants native to southern Iowa in my grandparent's time are now thriving in the Twin Cities. By the time my daughter is an old woman, the ecosystem I'm familiar with here in southern MN will be on the Canadian border or beyond; our land may be closer in climate to Memphis than Minneapolis. The oak savanna and basswood/sugar maple climax ecosystems in my area aren't going to survive this. If we're lucky, they'll have migrated hundreds of miles north, displacing the spruce/pine/birch forests that form Minnesota's iconic North Woods. Frankly, I have no idea what the ecosystems of my state will look like. Lately, I've been purchasing seed from more southern species (magnolia, sycamore, tupelo, bald cypress, pawpaw, persimmon, etc) and growing them on my property alongside my natives in case they prove to be better suited to a warmer climate. So far, I've had surprisingly good success, which scares me a little because it shows just how warm we have become already.

With this background of uncertainty, who am I to say that the invasive species I've spent 25 years fighting aren't the ones who will survive and speciate out to fill all the empty niches once our current mass extinction event is finally over? A million years from now, those starlings I shoot could be evolving into eagle substitutes, and those buckthorn shrubs I remove evolving into maple tree substitutes.

It could be that trying to wipe out the invasives in my area is like going back to the Permian mass extinction and trying to wipe out all the Lystrosaurs because they were overrunning the place*.

*For those not familiar, lystrosaurs were one of the only vertebrate land animal survivors of the Permian mass extinction, and went on to speciate out into dozens of new species afterwards, forming the base of a new ecosystem.

[appal_jack]

3. Excellent insights, NickB79!

I appreciate your observations and willingness to respond to the facts on the ground and update your own strategies accordingly. I agree that with the climate changing, we need to be ready to work with a more fluid biotic community.



k&r,

-app