Propagule pressure increase and phylogenetic diversity decrease community’s susceptibility to invasion

BACKGROUND: Invasions pose a large threat to native species, but the question of why some species are more invasive, and some communities more prone to invasions than others, is far from solved. Using 10 different three-species bacterial communities, we tested experimentally if the phylogenetic relationships between an invader and a resident community and the propagule pressure affect invasion probability. RESULTS: We found that greater diversity in phylogenetic distances between the members of resident community and the invader lowered invasion success, and higher propagule pressure increased invasion success whereas phylogenetic distance had no clear effect. In the later stages of invasion, phylogenetic diversity had no effect on invasion success but community identity played a stronger role. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our results emphasize that invasion success does not depend only on propagule pressure, but also on the properties of the community members. Our results thus indicate that invasion is a process where both invader and residing community characters act in concert. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12898-017-0126-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.