How disturbance history alters invasion success: biotic legacies and regime change

Disturbance is a key factor shaping ecological communities, but little is understood about how the effects of disturbance processes accumulate over time. When disturbance regimes change, historical processes may influence future community structure, for example, by altering invasibility compared to communities with stable regimes. Here, we use an annual plant model to investigate how the history of disturbance alters invasion success. In particular, we show how two communities can have different outcomes from species introduction, solely due to past differences in disturbance regimes that generated different biotic legacies. We demonstrate that historical differences can enhance or suppress the persistence of introduced species, and that biotic legacies generated by stable disturbance history decay over time, though legacies can persist for unexpectedly long durations. This establishes a formal theoretical foundation for disturbance legacies having profound effects on communities, and highlights the value of further research on the biotic legacies of disturbance. Disturbance has many effects on communities, and much is still not known about how these effects accumulate over time. We use an annual plant model to demonstrate how legacies of disturbance can affect future community composition, long after disturbance regimes have changed. In particular, we show that differences in disturbance history can alter invasion success even when present disturbance regimes are identical.