What are the competitive effects of invasive species? Forty years of the Eurasian collared-dove in North America
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ORIGINAL PAPER
What are the competitive effects of invasive species? Forty years of the Eurasian collared-dove in North America Walter D. Koenig
Received: 16 May 2019 / Accepted: 23 August 2020 Ó Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Eurasian collared-doves (Streptopelia decaocto; hereafter ‘collared-doves’) have spread throughout North America since they first colonized Florida in the early 1980s. Here I test for adverse effects of this introduced species on four confamilial potential competitor dove and pigeon species using data from the breeding season (North American Breeding Bird Survey; BBS) and the winter (Audubon Christmas Bird Count; CBC). Within sites of both sets of surveys, correlations between populations of collared-doves and all four potential competitor species have generally been either nonsignificant or positive, indicating a lack of adverse competitive effects due to collared-doves. Similarly, there were no significant differences in population trends of any of the four species in sites where collared-doves were present compared to those where they were not, and there have been no significant declines in population trends of the four species driven by differences in collared-dove abundance in areas where the latter were present. Overall, analyses revealed no negative effects of collared-doves on populations of these potential competitors. Evidence thus far supports a ‘passenger’ W. D. Koenig (&) Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA e-mail: [email protected] W. D. Koenig Hastings Natural History Reservation, University of California Berkeley, Carmel Valley, CA 93924, USA
rather than a ‘driver’ role for collared-doves in North America, although future monitoring of potential competitor species is warranted, especially if collared-dove populations continue to increase. Keywords Band-tailed pigeon Competition Eurasian collared-dove Exotics Invasive species Mourning dove Rock pigeon White-winged dove
Introduction North American bird populations have been greatly altered since colonization by Europeans due to both human-induced extinctions—perhaps most notably the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) (Schorger 1955; Bucher 1992) but including at least half a dozen other species—and, conversely, through species introductions. The latter include a host of species, most successfully the house sparrow (Passer domesticus), European starling (Sturnus vulgaris), and rock pigeon (Columba livia). The effects of these alterations are often poorly understood and controversial in part because of the many confounding factors that concurrently affect native populations, but also because the overall impact of an exotic species can be on multiple levels, including not only individuals, populations, and the communities of which they are a part but also on genetic processes such as
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hybridization (Huxel 1999; Parker et al. 1999; Gurevitch and Padilla 2004). Yet another issue is whether
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