Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
Introduction
Biological invasions, i.e. cases when an alien species increases and spreads in a new region, are of enormous practical interest (Elton, 1958; Groves, 1989; Levin, 1989). Empirical studies show large differences between different community types in the number of alien species found there (Rejmánek, Richardson & Pyšek, 2005). It is therefore believed that the fact whether a community is invasible can tell us something on the “internal working” of the invaded communities; in particular, understanding why a particular species establishes in a particular community can shed light on the ecological processes structuring a community (Elton, 1958; Shea & Chesson, 2002; Moore et al., 2001). Experimental studies have shown that invasion success may be affected by processes such as disturbance (Fox & Fox, 1986; Mooney & Drake, 1986; Burke & Grime, 1996), fluctuating resources (Davis, Grime & Thompson, 2000), or growth rate ranking of species (Rejmánek & Richardson, 1996).
In theoretical studies, invasibility has been routinely used as a stability measure in Lotka–Volterra or similar systems (Case, 1990; Law & Morton, 1996; Moore et al., 2001; Byers & Noonburg, 2003). Nevertheless there is a certain gap between theoretical understanding of community invasibility (Shea & Chesson, 2002) and empirical studies of single invasions. The latter inevitably study events that are singular in their nature (Rejmánek et al., 2005). Studies of individual invasions typically concentrate on specific biological traits of the invasive species that are essential for their invasion success.
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