多年来，Doug Tallamy对来自国外造成的植物造成的坟墓构成的严重威胁感到震惊。通过将本土植物社区转化为所谓的新颖风景，越来越多地由许多昆虫无法饲养的异国情调，昆虫学家猜测，他们不仅昆虫危机，而且缺乏依赖于昆虫的昆虫而依赖于生存的鸟类和其他动物。
Not everyone has greeted the thesis with open arms. The effect of introduced plants on native biodiversity has been one of the most contentious issues in ecology,comparedPeter del Tredici哈佛大学阿诺德·阿尔博斯姆的高级研究科学家Peter del Tredici对枪支控制，堕胎和当代文化中的热按钮问题“。“在过去的几十年里，”19个领先的生态学家包括Del Tredici，在2011年写道评论in the journal Nature, "‘non-native’ species have been vilified for driving beloved ‘native’ species to extinction and generally polluting ‘natural’ environments… ‘Nativeness’ is not a sign of evolutionary fitness or of a species having positive effects."
Dozens of recent studies, however, have provided evidence that supports Tallamy’s hotly disputed hypothesis. In a纸11月18日在线发表，赤虫草和两位共同作者审查了该研究的主张，即农业非原生植物的本土植物社区的广泛流离失所，是昆虫下降的关键原因。
Insects have been clobbered by an array of threats, from habitat destruction and deforestation to climate change.
非本土植物的问题已成为“昆虫启示型”的范围成为新的紧急情况已经清楚了。In the past few years, insect declines have beendocumentedaround the globe, including western and northern Europe, North America, neotropical countries such as Costa Rica and Puerto Rico and even the High Arctic. In a comprehensive评论在生物保护中发表的73份历史报告中，科学家发现，在陆地生态系统中，鳞翅目（蝴蝶和飞蛾），Hymenoptera（蜜蜂及其亲属）和鞘翅目（甲虫），以及odonata等四个主要水生昆虫群体（蜻蜓）而且诅咒了，遭受了戏剧性的下降。更重要的是，它不仅仅是具有限制生态需求的专业物种，例如对少量植物的依赖，这也是困扰但许多常见和通用的物种。2017年封锁炸弹研究这揭示了德国保护区27年来飞昆虫的生物量下降了76％的震惊，将昆虫困扰着公众意识。
据研究人员介绍，全球昆虫消亡始于20世纪20世纪50年代和20世纪60年代的黎明，并在过去的二十年中全球达到了惊人的比例。持续的“Bird Armageddon”的报告，反映了昆虫启示型的镜子表明，食虫鸟类在全球昆虫群体的崩溃中一直是抵押损害。
科学家们表示，昆虫被一系列持续的威胁，从栖息地破坏，森林毁灭，气候变化和对工业农业崛起的轻微污染的持续威胁堵塞。广泛的公布研究去年在PLOS中出版，计算美国农业对昆虫的毒性48倍，而不是25年前，新烟碱蛋白杀虫剂占致命升级的92％;该研究指出，“毒性负荷的这种增加符合近年来观察到的有益昆虫和食虫鸟类种群的减少。”然而，一种吸引了很少的通知的威胁，而且超过两次国际专家未能提及他们的recommendations对于昆虫危机的解决方案，是在世界各地以非原生植被的替代本地植物。
当原生宿主植物dwindle或消失时，植物吃昆虫的种群缩小并变得越来越多。
Tallamy’s paper aims to rectify the oversight. University of Connecticut entomologist David Wagner, who peer-reviewed the paper, called it a "much needed contribution" to the insect conservation literature. He added that it "does an especially laudable job of exposing the weak footing of many arguments that some have used to claim that non-native plants are not a threat to biodiversity, which I regard as nonsense."
Marmalester College的生态学家Mark Davis有一个不同的观点。他指出，甚至赤虫和他的共同作者承认，他们只能将非原生植物的影响从当地鳞片上进行的短期研究外推，因为尚未完成景观规模研究。“换句话说，”戴维斯说：“尚无证据表明，非原生植物减少了昆虫丰富的一般景观。”
塔卢萨斯早期的亨舍认为，非原生植物有助于减少昆虫人群是基于几十年的研究表明许多昆虫，特别是植物饮食物种，占大多数昆虫多样性，取决于有限数量的生存植物。自20世纪60年代以来，科学家们将这种所谓的主体植物专业归功于几个因素，包括需要喂食昆虫以发展植物防御的方式，例如生产对其他物种致命的化学化合物。结果，大多数昆虫的饮食仅限于单一植物家族，并且更近的物种对热带来说，他们的菜单可能会越受约束。例如，在巴布亚新几内亚的雨林中超过90％的昆虫草食物，只能在单一属中使用植物，或密切相关的物种。
蝴蝶和飞蛾的饮食限制已经研究了群体暴跌的其他昆虫团体的限制。五年前的科学家看着at the diet breadth of plant-eating insects around the world, they found that 69 percent of caterpillar species can develop on just one plant family. Given such restricted diets, Tallamy and his co-authors write, it stands to reason that "the displacement of native plants by non-native species may have profound effects on phytophagous insect populations everywhere."
Some 96% of North American terrestrial birds rear their young on insects, so when insects decline, they do too.
In fact, research has shown repeatedly that when native host plants dwindle or disappear from an area, the populations of insect herbivores shrink and become less diverse. An分析of 76 studies of caterpillar health on native and introduced plants found that with few exceptions, caterpillars were larger and more likely to survive when reared on their native host plants. And in plant communities invaded by non-native species, the study found, the abundance and diversity of butterflies and moths were significantly reduced.
但是，有例外情况。在一小部分案例中，昆虫食草动物已经采用引入的植物作为食物来源，特别是如果它们属于与其本地寄主的同一属或家庭。在最庆祝的例子中，34％的加州蝴蝶物种是found在非本土植物上喂食或产卵。
Because not every study has demonstrated negative effects, the long-running controversy over whether introduced plants are harmful to native insects continues. Ecologist Richard Hobbs, a senior research fellow at the University of Western Australia’s School of Biological Sciences, says that "the assumption that species cannot adapt to new resources is being increasingly questioned." He notes that "studies indicate that non-native species can have positive, neutral or negative impacts, and it is not as simple as just assuming that non-native species are just plain bad."
If American homeowners converted half of their lawn to productive native plant communities, he says, they would create a 'Homegrown National Park.'
然而，根据赤毛葡萄酒，积极案例罕见，“你必须看看消极的和积极影响。”他指出了美国东方东部的猖獗入侵者的Kudzu。已被发现支持银色斑点的船长，这是一个本地蝴蝶。这导致了一些人得出结论，侵入性的非原生植物并非都不糟糕。“随着葛兰入侵，你可能会获得银色斑点的船长，”塔丽萨斯回应“，但你失去了数千种”这取决于Kudzu所取代的原生植物。
甚至在考虑非原生植物的人中有重大问题的人中，对他们姿势的威胁程度有一些意见差异。康涅狄格大学的瓦格纳，威尔斯将昆虫的困境描述为“一千条削减的死亡”，“毫无疑问，侵入物种和我们在院子里的植物的植物正在造成昆虫的损失。”虽然它们是“超级重要的压力园”，但在瓦格纳的话语中，真正的破坏性“削减”是农业强化，森林砍伐和土地利用变化。“那些是那些只是邪恶的坏人，”他补充道，“并使物种难以与这个星球上的人类继续生活。”
Tallamy says that in 2001, when he began to focus on this subject, "there was a whole lot in the literature on the problems caused by invasive species but wrecking the food web wasn’t one of them." When he realized how large an area has been transformed by non-native plants, it struck him that this was a major issue. Nearly half of the planet’s land is in some form of agriculture. According to the World Bank, almost 45 percent of the land in the lower 48 U.S. states is devoted to production agriculture, and this figure soars when the area occupied by rangeland and tree farms is factored in. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 44 percent of the world’s planted forests include non-native tree species; many have escaped from cultivation and dominate nearby native forests. Tallamy and his co-authors also call attention to the fact that due in large part to the strong preference for exotic plants in landscaping, urban areas are rife with introduced species, and it’s estimated that these quickly growing areas could cover as much as 20 percent of the earth’s habitable land by 2030.
园艺是自然和人主的景观中侵入性非原生植物的主要增殖者之一。研究表明，50％至70％的侵入性和归化物种通过园艺贸易抵达其新土地。塔富豪指出，即使这些观赏植物从未成为侵入性，它们仍然取代对大多数昆虫的生存至关重要的本地植被。
用突破性的2018年全国科学院诉讼程序的话语纸由Tallamy”普遍的偏好for non-native plants in the horticultural industry has globally transformed millions of acres from potential habitat into ‘food deserts’ for native insects, with the unintentional consequence of reducing the abundance and distribution of birds as well." The paper was the first to provide data demonstrating that the decline of insects has cascading effects higher up the food chain.
For three years, lead author Desirée Narango, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a team of field assistants measured what happens to breeding Carolina chickadees and the caterpillars that are essential food for their chicks in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Among their findings is that parent birds foraged for food on native plants 86 percent of the time. Yards dominated by introduced plants produced 75 percent less caterpillar biomass than primarily native landscapes and were 60 percent less likely to have breeding chickadees at all. Nests that chickadees did build in yards with many non-native plants contained 1.5 fewer eggs than nests on properties dominated by natives.
山雀能够实现所谓的替代率 - 即每年产生足够的小鸡，以取代成年人，越过老年和捕食者 - 只有距离植物生物质少于30％的码;不幸的是，对于鸟类而言，纳冈戈和她的共同作者发现，平均而言，华盛顿州的56％的植物，D.C.郊区不是原产的。他们指出，如果Carolina Chickadee等普通的“城市适应”鸟类受到典型郊区景观中的相对缺乏食物的限制，它可能是鸟类患有更专业的饮食的更大问题。更重要的是，大约96％的北美陆地鸟类在昆虫上的幼虫而不是种子或浆果，所以当昆虫衰退时，他们也是如此。
出于这些原因，Tallamy有proposed国内版本的哈佛生物学家E.O.威尔逊的Half Earth Project。如果美国房主将他们的一半草坪转换为生产的原生植物社区，他们将创建一个比大沼泽地，黄石，优胜美地，大提顿，峡谷，雷尼尔，北瀑布，荒地，奥运，荒地，奥林匹克，红杉，大峡谷，Denali和大型烟雾山国家公园合并。
在他们的新论文结束时，蜂蜜和他的共同作者承认我们知识的关键差距仍然存在。But they conclude that at this point enough studies have been completed and enough evidence gathered that, in Tallamy’s words, "we can now definitively answer the question, ‘Are alien plants bad?’ In terms of supporting insects, the preponderance of the evidence says yes."
