Aridity and grazing are associated with reduced trait complementarity and higher invasion intensity of Solanum rostratum in native plant communities

作者：Kai Shi, Misbah Naz, Chi Zhang, Hua Shao · 发表于：Functional Ecology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1111/1365-2435.70177 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant Parasitism and Resistance、Agronomic Practices and Intercropping Systems

Abstract The biotic resistance hypothesis (BRH) of Elton posits that diverse communities are more resistant to biological invasions. While the effects of climatic stresses and human disturbances on community invasibility have been extensively studied individually, their combined and potentially interactive influences remain poorly understood. To address this problem, a national‐scale survey was conducted on 3000 km in China to assess the relationship between the intensity of Solanum rostratum invasion and the diversity of native species. Our study found that sites with higher native plant biodiversity generally exhibited lower S. rostratum invasion intensity. Specifically, native plant diversity helped resist invasion by improving community complementarity, increasing community density, coverage, and biomass, promoting community‐weighted means (CWM) of resource‐conservative traits, and reducing trait differences between invasive and native plants. Furthermore, biodiversity loss was associated with higher S. rostratum invasion intensity. Specifically, sites with higher aridity and grazing tended to have lower biodiversity, reduced community complementarity, decreased density, coverage and biomass, and lower community‐weighted means of resource‐conservative traits. In particular, phylogenetic diversity (Faith's PD) and the Simpson index were more effective than species richness in predicting the resistance of local communities to invasion by S. rostratum and showed stronger neg...