Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests
Halting biological invasions and rewilding extirpated native fauna are conservation interventions to bolster biodiversity, species interactions, and ecosystems. These actions are often considered separately and the potential for reintroduced wildlife to facilitate invasive plants has been largely ov...
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sg-ntu-dr.10356-1741922024-03-25T15:30:52Z Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests Ho, Chervil Dehaudt, Bastien Lee, Benjamin P. Y. H. Tan, Renee Hui Ying Luskin, Matthew Scott Asian School of the Environment Earth and Environmental Sciences Faunal reintroduction Human disturbances Halting biological invasions and rewilding extirpated native fauna are conservation interventions to bolster biodiversity, species interactions, and ecosystems. These actions are often considered separately and the potential for reintroduced wildlife to facilitate invasive plants has been largely overlooked. Here, we investigated the role of Singapore's recolonizing native wild pigs (Sus scrofa) in facilitating an invasive weed Miconia crenata into tropical rainforests, which are normally highly resistant to invasion. We conducted line-transect surveys in 11 Singaporean rain forests and used generalized linear mixed models to consider the contribution of pigs' soil disturbances, human forest paths, and other environmental covariates, on the density of M. crenata. We found that M. crenata was more abundant at forest edges and invasion into forest interior was facilitated by pigs, paths, and canopy gaps, but that these effects were all additive, not synergistic (i.e., not multiplicative). These results highlight how modern invasions are driven by multiple disturbances as well as propagule pressure (e.g., urban birds dispersing seeds at forest edges where they establish in pig soil disturbances). Singapore's extensive native forest restoration efforts may have provided plentiful edge and secondary forests that are well suited to pigs and M. crenata, which in turn undermine the aims of fostering later-successional native plant communities. To prevent negative externalities, we suggest that plant restoration and rewilding projects consider the potential role of wildlife in facilitating non-native plants, and couple these actions with preliminary screening of unintended consequences and continued monitoring, as well as limiting human-mediated weed invasion to minimize propagule sources. Published version 2024-03-19T05:30:43Z 2024-03-19T05:30:43Z 2023 Journal Article Ho, C., Dehaudt, B., Lee, B. P. Y. H., Tan, R. H. Y. & Luskin, M. S. (2023). Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests. Biotropica, 55(5), 1033-1044. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/btp.13251 0006-3606 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174192 10.1111/btp.13251 2-s2.0-85168622256 5 55 1033 1044 en Biotropica © 2023 The Authors. Biotropica published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. application/pdf |
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Earth and Environmental Sciences Faunal reintroduction Human disturbances Ho, Chervil Dehaudt, Bastien Lee, Benjamin P. Y. H. Tan, Renee Hui Ying Luskin, Matthew Scott Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests |
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Halting biological invasions and rewilding extirpated native fauna are conservation interventions to bolster biodiversity, species interactions, and ecosystems. These actions are often considered separately and the potential for reintroduced wildlife to facilitate invasive plants has been largely overlooked. Here, we investigated the role of Singapore's recolonizing native wild pigs (Sus scrofa) in facilitating an invasive weed Miconia crenata into tropical rainforests, which are normally highly resistant to invasion. We conducted line-transect surveys in 11 Singaporean rain forests and used generalized linear mixed models to consider the contribution of pigs' soil disturbances, human forest paths, and other environmental covariates, on the density of M. crenata. We found that M. crenata was more abundant at forest edges and invasion into forest interior was facilitated by pigs, paths, and canopy gaps, but that these effects were all additive, not synergistic (i.e., not multiplicative). These results highlight how modern invasions are driven by multiple disturbances as well as propagule pressure (e.g., urban birds dispersing seeds at forest edges where they establish in pig soil disturbances). Singapore's extensive native forest restoration efforts may have provided plentiful edge and secondary forests that are well suited to pigs and M. crenata, which in turn undermine the aims of fostering later-successional native plant communities. To prevent negative externalities, we suggest that plant restoration and rewilding projects consider the potential role of wildlife in facilitating non-native plants, and couple these actions with preliminary screening of unintended consequences and continued monitoring, as well as limiting human-mediated weed invasion to minimize propagule sources. |
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Asian School of the Environment |
author_facet |
Asian School of the Environment Ho, Chervil Dehaudt, Bastien Lee, Benjamin P. Y. H. Tan, Renee Hui Ying Luskin, Matthew Scott |
format |
Article |
author |
Ho, Chervil Dehaudt, Bastien Lee, Benjamin P. Y. H. Tan, Renee Hui Ying Luskin, Matthew Scott |
author_sort |
Ho, Chervil |
title |
Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests |
title_short |
Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests |
title_full |
Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests |
title_fullStr |
Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests |
title_full_unstemmed |
Recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into Singapore's rain forests |
title_sort |
recolonizing native wildlife facilitates exotic plant invasion into singapore's rain forests |
publishDate |
2024 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174192 |
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1795302141172121600 |