Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour
Human-induced environmental changes, such as the introduction of invasive species, are driving declines in the movement of nutrients across ecosystems with negative consequences for ecosystem function. Declines in nutrient inputs could thus have knock-on effects at higher trophic levels and broader...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9834043 2023-05-15T18:05:20+02:00 Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour Gunn, Rachel L. Benkwitt, Cassandra E. Graham, Nicholas A. J. Hartley, Ian R. Algar, Adam C. Keith, Sally A. 2023-01-05 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834043/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36604551 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01931-8 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834043/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36604551 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01931-8 © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Nat Ecol Evol Article Text 2023 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01931-8 2023-01-15T02:06:21Z Human-induced environmental changes, such as the introduction of invasive species, are driving declines in the movement of nutrients across ecosystems with negative consequences for ecosystem function. Declines in nutrient inputs could thus have knock-on effects at higher trophic levels and broader ecological scales, yet these interconnections remain relatively unknown. Here we show that a terrestrial invasive species (black rats, Rattus rattus) disrupts a nutrient pathway provided by seabirds, ultimately altering the territorial behaviour of coral reef fish. In a replicated ecosystem-scale natural experiment, we found that reef fish territories were larger and the time invested in aggression lower on reefs adjacent to rat-infested islands compared with rat-free islands. This response reflected changes in the economic defendability of lower-quality resources, with reef fish obtaining less nutritional gain per unit foraging effort adjacent to rat-infested islands with low seabird populations. These results provide a novel insight into how the disruption of nutrient flows by invasive species can affect variation in territorial behaviour. Rat eradication as a conservation strategy therefore has the potential to restore species interactions via territoriality, which can scale up to influence populations and communities at higher ecological levels. Text Rattus rattus PubMed Central (PMC) Nature Ecology & Evolution 7 1 82 91 |
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Article Gunn, Rachel L. Benkwitt, Cassandra E. Graham, Nicholas A. J. Hartley, Ian R. Algar, Adam C. Keith, Sally A. Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour |
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Article |
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Human-induced environmental changes, such as the introduction of invasive species, are driving declines in the movement of nutrients across ecosystems with negative consequences for ecosystem function. Declines in nutrient inputs could thus have knock-on effects at higher trophic levels and broader ecological scales, yet these interconnections remain relatively unknown. Here we show that a terrestrial invasive species (black rats, Rattus rattus) disrupts a nutrient pathway provided by seabirds, ultimately altering the territorial behaviour of coral reef fish. In a replicated ecosystem-scale natural experiment, we found that reef fish territories were larger and the time invested in aggression lower on reefs adjacent to rat-infested islands compared with rat-free islands. This response reflected changes in the economic defendability of lower-quality resources, with reef fish obtaining less nutritional gain per unit foraging effort adjacent to rat-infested islands with low seabird populations. These results provide a novel insight into how the disruption of nutrient flows by invasive species can affect variation in territorial behaviour. Rat eradication as a conservation strategy therefore has the potential to restore species interactions via territoriality, which can scale up to influence populations and communities at higher ecological levels. |
format |
Text |
author |
Gunn, Rachel L. Benkwitt, Cassandra E. Graham, Nicholas A. J. Hartley, Ian R. Algar, Adam C. Keith, Sally A. |
author_facet |
Gunn, Rachel L. Benkwitt, Cassandra E. Graham, Nicholas A. J. Hartley, Ian R. Algar, Adam C. Keith, Sally A. |
author_sort |
Gunn, Rachel L. |
title |
Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour |
title_short |
Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour |
title_full |
Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour |
title_fullStr |
Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour |
title_full_unstemmed |
Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour |
title_sort |
terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behaviour |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834043/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36604551 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01931-8 |
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Rattus rattus |
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Rattus rattus |
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Nat Ecol Evol |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834043/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36604551 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01931-8 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01931-8 |
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Nature Ecology & Evolution |
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