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Summary Theories of species coexistence and invasion ecology are fundamentally connected and provide a common theoretical framework for studying the mechanisms underlying successful invasions and their ecological impacts. Temporal fluctuations in resource availability and differences in life-history traits between invasive and resident species are considered as likely drivers of the dynamics of invaded communities. Current critical issues in invasion ecology thus relate to the extent to which such mechanisms influence coexistence between invasive and resident species and to the ability of resident species to persist in an invasive-dominated ecosystem. We tested how a fluctuating resource, and species trait differences may explain and help predict long-term impacts of biological invasions in forest specialist insect communities. We used a simple invasion system comprising closely related invasive and resident seed-specialized wasps (Hymenoptera: Torymidae) competing for a well-known fluctuating resource and displaying divergent diapause, reproductive and phenological traits. Based on extensive long-term field observations (1977–2010), we developed a combination of mechanistic and statistical models aiming to (i) obtain a realistic description of the population dynamics of these interacting species over time, and (ii) clarify the respective contributions of fluctuation-dependent and fluctuation-independent mechanisms to long-term impact of invasion on the population dynamics of the resident wasp species. We showed that a fluctuation-dependent mechanism was unable to promote coexistence of the resident and invasive species. Earlier phenology of the invasive species was the main driver of invasion success, enabling the invader to exploit an empty niche. Phenology also had the greatest power to explain the long-term negative impact of the invasive on the resident species, through resource pre-emption. This study provides strong support for the critical role of species differences in interspecific competition outcomes within animal communities. Our mechanistic-statistical approach disentangles the critical drivers of novel species assemblages resulting from intentional and non-intentional introductions of non-native species.

In this paper, we investigate the inside dynamics of the positive solutions of integro-differential equations \begin{equation*} \partial_t u(t,x)= (J\star u)(t,x) -u(t,x) + f(u(t,x)), \ t>0 \hbox{ and } x\in\mathbb{R}, \end{equation*} with both thin-tailed and fat-tailed dispersal kernels $J$ and a monostable reaction term $f.$ The notion of inside dynamics has been introduced to characterize traveling waves of some reaction-diffusion equations [23]. Assuming that the solution is made of several fractions $\upsilon^i\ge 0$ ($i\in I \subset \mathbb{N}$), its inside dynamics is given by the spatio-temporal evolution of $\upsilon^i$. According to this dynamics, the traveling waves can be classified in two categories: pushed and pulled waves. For thin-tailed kernels, we observe no qualitative differences between the traveling waves of the above integro-differential equations and the traveling waves of the classical reaction-diffusion equations. In particular, in the KPP case ($f(u)\leq f'(0)u$ for all $u\in(0,1)$) we prove that all the traveling waves are pulled. On the other hand for fat-tailed kernels, the integro-differential equations do not admit any traveling waves. Therefore, to analyse the inside dynamics of a solution in this case, we introduce new notions of pulled and pushed solutions. Within this new framework, we provide analytical and numerical results showing that the solutions of integro-differential equations involving a fat-tailed dispersal kernel are pushed. Our results have applications in population genetics. They show that the existence of long distance dispersal events during a colonization tend to preserve the genetic diversity.

International audience; Many animal species experiencing spatial or interannual fluctuations of their environment are capable of prolonged diapause, a kind of dormancy that extends over more than one year. Such a prolonged diapause is commonly perceived as a temporal demographic refuge in stochastic environments, but empirical evidence is still lacking of its consequences on temporal population genetic structures. In this long-term study, we investigated how a particular pattern of prolonged diapause may influence the temporal population genetics of the invasive seed-specialized wasp Megastigmus schimitscheki (Hymenoptera: Torymidae) in southeastern France. We characterized the diapause strategy of M. schimitscheki using records of emergence from diapause in 97 larval cohorts, and we conducted a temporal population genetic study on a natural invasive wasp population sampled during ten consecutive years (1999-2008) using polymorphic microsatellite markers. We found that M. schimitscheki can undergo a prolonged diapause of up to five years and displays two main adult emergence peaks after two and four years of diapause. Such a bimodal and atypical pattern did not disrupt temporal gene flow between cohorts produced in even and in odd years during the period of the study. Unexpectedly, we found that this wasp population consisted of two distinct genetic sub-populations that strongly diverged in their diapause strategies, with very few admixed individuals. One of the sub-populations displayed both short and prolonged diapause (2 and 4 years respectively) in equal proportions, whereas the other sub-population displayed mainly short diapause. This study provided empirical evidence that prolonged diapause phenotypes can substantially contribute to reproduction and impact temporal genetic structures. Prolonged diapause is likely to act as both demographic and genetic refuges for insect populations living in fluctuating environments.