Abstract
Numerous introduced species from cosmopolitan biogeographic origins have naturalized in the Hawaiian Islands and are spreading while native plant cover has declined. Phylogenetic, functional, and biogeographical diversity have been shown to influence invasion success, but relationships between these diversity measures and native plant abundance in invaded oceanic island forests have not been well established. Here we surveyed plant cover in 50 plots (400 m2) on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. We measured four performance-related functional traits (specific leaf area, stem specific density, seed dry mass, and maximum plant height), and determined the growth form of each plant species. We calculated the differences between native and non-native community weighted mean trait values and assessed whether these differences, as well as measures of diversity, were associated with native and non-native cover. We found that average trait values were significantly higher for maximum height in natives, and significantly higher for specific leaf area and stem specific density in non-natives. A larger difference in maximum height between natives and non-natives was correlated with reduced non-native cover. Functional divergence and phylogenetic diversity of natives were positively correlated with native cover. Functional divergence and richness of non-natives were positively correlated with non-native cover. Biogeographical diversity was not significantly correlated with non-native cover but had indirect effects via its significant correlation with non-native functional richness, which was positively correlated with non-native cover. These findings suggest that diversity and competition for light may be important determinants of native and non-native species cover in invaded Hawaiian forests. An increasing number of distinct non-native plant introductions is thus likely to be associated with continued declines in native plant cover.
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Data availability
Trait data measured in this study will be uploaded to the TRY database. Data supporting the results of this paper has been archived in the University of Hawaiʻi ScholarSpace repository: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/69125
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Acknowledgements
This research would not have been possible without the help of numerous individuals. Specifically, we thank Kristina May for her assistance in the field. We thank the Hawaiʻi Department of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW) for permitting access to our research sites, and their staff for help in locating sites in the Pahole NAR. Similarly, the assistance of the staff from the U.S. Army Garrison, Hawaiʻi Natural Resources Program in cooperation with the Office of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Hawaiʻi, especially Kapua Kawelo and Michelle Akamine, was invaluable for the location and sampling of sites in the Pahole NAR. We also thank Patty Welton and her husband for their assistance locating plots in the Pahole NAR and for clarification of questions related to her thesis. We thank Timothy Gallagher, Clyde Lmada, and Nicholas Walvoord at Bishop Museum as well for their assistance in accessing herbarium specimens, as well as David Duffy, Don Drake, Travis Idol, and Mark Merlin for their feedback which helped us to improve earlier versions of our manuscript. In addition, this study has been supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits (http://www.try-db.org). The TRY initiative and database is hosted, developed and maintained by J. Kattge and G. Bönisch (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany). TRY is currently supported by DIVERSITAS/Future Earth and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. Finally, we thank the reviewers selected by this publication for their time and input concerning our manuscript.
Funding
This research was possible thanks to funding provided by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Botany Department and the Ecology Evolution and Conservation Biology (EECB) program in the form of the Charles H. Lamoureux Fellowship in Plant Conservation and the Watson T. Yoshimoto Fellowship in Wildlife Conservation, respectively.
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Both authors conceived of the research idea; Joshua Hibit collected data, performed statistical analyses, and led the writing of the manuscript; both authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.
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Hibit, J., Daehler, C.C. Plant functional, biogeographical and phylogenetic diversity are related to native and non-native plant abundance in invaded Hawaiian forests. Biol Invasions 26, 705–717 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-023-03201-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-023-03201-5