The idea of ‘friends with benefits’ is reasonably widespread and understood. Having good interactions with others will often lead to even more productive outcomes. But what about ‘enemies with benefits’? Are there times where your enemy can give you some positive benefits?
Invasive species cause ecological harm worldwide, threatening biodiversity, disrupting nutrient cycling and displacing native species. Pacific islands, with their characteristically high rates of endemism, experience out-sized effects from plant invasions (Bellard et al. 2014). In biodiversity hotspots, such as New Zealand, exotic invasive plant species now outnumber native species in area and in number.
But, how do they do it?
A study by Lauren Waller and other Lincoln University and University of Canterbury colleagues, published in Journal of Ecology attempts to find some answers. Lauren shows that exotic plants may gain their competitive edge by accumulating enemies in the soil and sharing them with neighbouring native plants, a phenomenon that plant ecologists call pathogen spillover.
Lauren set up a large mesocosm (self-contained area) experiment. These were areas where new species could be added to a known group of native species in a very manageable process. The health and growth of all plants could be measured and microorganisms both present at the start and brought in on the introduced plants could be identified.
Lauren expected exotic plants to experience improved growth due to escape from pathogens (leaving the burden of enemies behind when they come to NZ). This assumption comes in large part from two well-known hypotheses, the Enemy Release Hypothesis and the Evolution of Increased Competitive Ability (EICA) Hypothesis. Enemy Release states that exotic plants can gain incredible success when they move to a new location lacking the enemy pressure they experienced in their home range, particularly co-evolved specialist enemies. EICA goes a step further to suggest that if exotic plants can escape enemy pressure in their new range, those plants will have more resources to allocate to growth over defence.
Somewhat supporting Enemy Release, exotic plants did not appear to suffer much from specialist fungal pathogens. However, exotic plants did associate with generalist pathogens. Also, in support of Enemy Release, exotic plants did not appear to allocate resources to defence. Instead, exotic plants appeared to tolerate generalist pathogen pressure without reducing their growth.
Lauren did not expect to see big impacts by exotic plants on native plants, and boy, did they! Native plants just wasted away when grown with exotic plants. It was very sad to watch. This photo shows an example of a native bunch-grass, grown with all native neighbours (left) or in communities dominated by exotic plants (right).
What explained the out-sized effect of exotic plants on native plant growth? Our network analysis showed that exotics not only accumulated and tolerated generalist pathogens, but they shared their pathogens with native plants. Native plants did not appear to have the same tolerance for this enemy pressure like the exotic plants did.
We started by asking ‘are there times where your enemy can give you some positive benefits?’. It turns out that yes there are times when your enemies can help you a lot. In this case if species cause you problems it will be OK for you if they cause competing species even more problems! With invasive species, your microbial enemies can do you a good turn but taking out the opposition.
Now that’s a real enemy with benefits!
Lauren Waller and Adrian Paterson wrote this together (and not as enemies!). They are lecturers in the Department of Pest-management and Conservation.
Bellard, C., Leclerc, C., Leroy, B., Bakkenes, M., Veloz, S., Thuiller, W., & Courchamp, F. (2014). Vulnerability of biodiversity hotspots to global change. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 23(12), 1376-1386
