生物入侵的影响是否准确可知?

Biological invasions: Are their impacts precisely knowable or not?

生物入侵常常带来一系列负面影响,如物种快速丧失、巨大经济损失、生态公益急剧降低、不可逆环境破坏等。正是这些负面影响引起科技界、政府和公众对生物入侵的极大关注。因此,准确量化生物入侵的影响非常重要。然而,广泛使用的生物入侵影响评估方法存在两个严重缺陷:一是缺乏真实对照,二是包含非入侵效应。这两个缺陷使得人们对生物入侵影响的了解相对粗略。为此,作者提出两点建议:一是在实验条件下设置真实对照,二是考虑同步对照。评估方法的完善将有助于人们更加准确地理解生物入侵的影响。

Biological invasions are ubiquitous worldwide and have demonstrable negative impacts(e.g., rapid biodiversity losses, substantial economic losses, decreased ecosystem services, and irreversible environmental damage). Quantifying the impacts of biological invasions is among the core questions in invasion biology, and also a practical issue in ecosystem management. Existing approaches have two serious shortcomings:(1) the absence of true controls and(2) the presence of confounding non-invasion effects. These approaches, therefore, cannot precisely quantify the impacts of biological invasions in the field. Here, I explicitly highlight these long-overlooked drawbacks when quantifying invasion impacts, and propose two potential solutions:(1) creating true controls at the beginning of studies and(2) considering a "synchronous control" over the course of an experiment. These solutions might help us to precisely understand the impacts of biological invasions.