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Explaining variability in the production of seed and allergenic pollen by invasive Ambrosia artemisiifolia across Europe

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Abstract

To better manage invasive populations, it is vital to understand the environmental drivers underlying spatial variation in demographic performance of invasive individuals and populations. The invasive common ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, has severe adverse effects on agriculture and human health, due to its vast production of seeds and allergenic pollen. Here, we identify the scale and nature of environmental factors driving individual performance of A. artemisiifolia, and assess their relative importance. We studied 39 populations across the European continent, covering different climatic and habitat conditions. We found that plant size is the most important determinant in variation of per-capita seed and pollen production. Using plant volume as a measure of individual performance, we found that the local environment (i.e. the site) is far more influential for plant volume (explaining 25% of all spatial variation) than geographic position (regional level; 8%) or the neighbouring vegetation (at the plot level; 4%). An overall model including environmental factors at all scales performed better (27%), including the weather (bigger plants in warm and wet conditions), soil type (smaller plants on soils with more sand), and highlighting the negative effects of altitude, neighbouring vegetation and bare soil. Pollen and seed densities varied more than 200-fold between sites, with highest estimates in Croatia, Romania and Hungary. Pollen densities were highest on arable fields, while highest seed densities were found along infrastructure, both significantly higher than on ruderal sites. We discuss implications of these findings for the spatial scale of management interventions against A. artemisiifolia.

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Acknowledgements

This study was coordinated within the framework of the EU COST Action FA1203 “Sustainable management of Ambrosia artemisiifolia across Europe (SMARTER)” (Müller-Schärer and Lommen 2014). The SMARTER Task Force “Population Dynamics” was initiated to study natural variation in the demography of A. artemisiifolia across the European continent. This allowed collecting labour-intensive data at a large geographic scale, exceeding the capacity of individuals groups (Colautti et al. 2014). For the coordination of the work, we acknowledge financial support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (C13.0146 to HMS and STEL), the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (13.0098.KP/M323-0760 to HMS) and that for Agriculture (1062-62,200 to HMS), the EU COST Action FA1203 ‘Sustainable management of Ambrosia artemisiifolia in Europe (SMARTER)’, and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO-grants 840.11.001/841.11.007 to CAH and EJ). We thank Carsten Skjøth for providing all weather data, Yan Sun for data on occurrences of A. artemisiifolia for the bioclimatic analysis, Olivier Brönnimann for help with the latter, Daniel Chapman for sources on Ambrosia abundance, and Rudolf Rohr for statistical advice. We acknowledge the support of the many local funding bodies and we are grateful to all those who made this research possible locally: people that organised sites, land owners and managers, and not least tens of people that helped in collecting data. An extensive list of local funding bodies and people acknowledged is provided in the Electronic Supplementary Information.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 10, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Suzanne T. E. Lommen, Cristina Preda & Heinz Müller-Schärer

  2. Institute for Water and Wetland Research, Radboud University, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Caspar A. Hallmann & Eelke Jongejans

  3. Agroécologie, AgroSup Dijon, INRA, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 21000, Dijon, France

    Bruno Chauvel

  4. Institute of Botany, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Gregor-Mendel-Straße 33, 1180, Vienna, Austria

    Melinda Leitsch-Vitalos & Gerhard Karrer

  5. Department of Geobotany and Eco-physiology, Institute of Botany, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Acharyan 1, 0040, Yerevan, Armenia

    Alla Aleksanyan

  6. Department of Plant Protection, Slovak University of Agriculture, A. Hlinku 2, 94976, Nitra, Slovakia

    Peter Tóth

  7. Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Ovidius University of Constanta, Aleea Universitatii 1, Corp B, 900470, Constanta, Romania

    Cristina Preda

  8. Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Svetosimunska 25, 10 000, Zagreb, Croatia

    Maja Šćepanović

  9. Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Gaziosmanpasa University, 60240, Tokat, Turkey

    Huseyin Onen

  10. Department of Botany and Nature Protection, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection, University of Silesia in Katowice, Jagiellonska 28, 40-032, Katowice, Poland

    Barbara Tokarska-Guzik

  11. Department of Botany and Microbiology & Botanic Garden “D. Brandza”, University of Bucharest, Intr. Portocalelolor 1-3, 060101, Bucharest, Romania

    Paulina Anastasiu

  12. Plant Protection Institute, Szent István University, Pater K. str. 1, Gödöllő, 2100, Hungary

    Zita Dorner & Mihály Zalai

  13. Hungarian Department of Biology and Ecology, Babeş-Bolyai University, Republicii str. 42, 400015, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Annamária Fenesi

  14. Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, Széchenyi István University, Vár 2, Mosonmagyaróvár, 9200, Hungary

    Katalin Nagy & Gyula Pinke

  15. Institute of Botany and Nature Conservation, Faculty of Forestry, University of West Hungary, Bajcsy-Zs. str. 4, Sopron, 9400, Hungary

    Viktor Tiborcz & Gergely Zagyvai

  16. Institute of Plant Science, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Kaposvár University, Guba S. str. 40, Kaposvár, 7400, Hungary

    Gabriella Kazinczi

  17. Agricultural Institute of Slovenia, Hacquetova ulica 17, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Robert Leskovšek

  18. Biology Department, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Montenegro, Džordža Vašingtona bb, 81 000, Podgorica, Montenegro

    Danijela Stešević

  19. Laboratoire de la Santé des Végétaux, Unité entomologie et plantes invasives, Anses, 755 avenue du Campus Agropolis, 34988, Monferrier-sur-Lez, France

    Guillaume Fried

  20. Institute of Botany, Ilia State University, Botanical Str. 1, 0105, Tbilisi, Georgia

    Levani Kalatozishvili

  21. Department of Ecology, Chair of Plant Ecology and Ecosystem Science, Technische Universität Berlin, Rothenburgstr. 12, 12165, Berlin, Germany

    Andreas Lemke

Authors
  1. Suzanne T. E. Lommen
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  2. Caspar A. Hallmann
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  3. Eelke Jongejans
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  4. Bruno Chauvel
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  5. Melinda Leitsch-Vitalos
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  6. Alla Aleksanyan
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  7. Peter Tóth
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  8. Cristina Preda
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  9. Maja Šćepanović
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  10. Huseyin Onen
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  11. Barbara Tokarska-Guzik
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  12. Paulina Anastasiu
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  13. Zita Dorner
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  14. Annamária Fenesi
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  15. Gerhard Karrer
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  16. Katalin Nagy
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  17. Gyula Pinke
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  18. Viktor Tiborcz
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  19. Gergely Zagyvai
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  20. Mihály Zalai
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  21. Gabriella Kazinczi
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  22. Robert Leskovšek
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  23. Danijela Stešević
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  24. Guillaume Fried
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  25. Levani Kalatozishvili
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  26. Andreas Lemke
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  27. Heinz Müller-Schärer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Suzanne T. E. Lommen.

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Lommen, S.T.E., Hallmann, C.A., Jongejans, E. et al. Explaining variability in the production of seed and allergenic pollen by invasive Ambrosia artemisiifolia across Europe. Biol Invasions 20, 1475–1491 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-017-1640-9

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