Recently, there has been an increasing number of papers attempting to predict species invasions (e.g.
Peterson 2003;
Muirhead & MacIsaac 2005). We believe that these works are highly valuable and will allow us to better understand where invasions are likely to occur and to better focus our management efforts. Here, we took the next step and formalized the construction of a joint model that integrated propagule pressure and invasibility. Such integration is important, as the results of this study made evident (). Logically, if we considered only invasibility, the potential extent of the invasion would be underestimated because we would not have incorporated the fact that some areas may be uninvaded simply because they have not had enough time for invasions to occur, rather than having unsuitable environments (
a). Conversely, propagule pressure is only relevant for sites that are invasible. If we considered only the propagule pressure model, the effect of propagule pressure on the probability of establishment in invasible sites would be underestimated since our statistical estimate would be biased downwards by non-invasible sites (
b). Over the long term, for models that consider only propagule pressure, we would predict that all sites would eventually be invaded, given enough time and a non-zero probability
P(
E|
Nl,t) (equation
(2.2)), because all sites would be treated as invasible. This would probably be false. However, where the data simply do not exist to build a joint model, the sub-models still offer improved predictability—we should always use the best information available. Nevertheless, where possible, a joint model is arguably most beneficial to get the most reasonable predictions of invasion progress over time and determine what management actions are justifiable.
The corollary of the above is that with a joint model it becomes clearer how the relative importance of invasibility versus propagule pressure changes with time and the stage of invasion (
Karst et al. 2005). If invasion is in its early stages, the dynamics will be largely driven by propagule pressure, such as in this study (
ca 10% of sites invaded). If the invasion is far progressed, propagule pressure should no longer be predictive and invasion status should primarily be driven by invasibility—all sites could have had sufficient propagule pressure for invasions to occur. Thus, using techniques that incorporate only invasibility (e.g. GARP,
Peterson 2003) to predict invasions may be effective using an invader's native range, under the assumption that adequate propagule pressures have occurred such that most potentially invasible areas have been invaded. However, in the new range, treating observed absences as uninvasible may be unwarranted as there might have been little propagule pressure to those areas. An explicitly joint model does not suffer from this limitation and is consistent regardless of the stage of invasion. In fact, these could be treated as testable hypotheses in other systems: propagule pressure is more important early in an invasion; invasibility is more important later in an invasion; and the joint model is always appropriate (derived from equations
(2.1) and
(2.2)).
Further, we believe that the appropriate way to analyse invasions is to explicitly use probabilities rather than an invasible/not invasible dichotomy. If we accept that there are typically unmeasured environmental variables that might be needed for persistence of a species, a fraction of sites should be uninvasible even when known environmental conditions appear suitable. The probabilities will be determined by the overlap of the known and unknown environmental variables (). Probabilities also fit naturally into quantitative risk analyses, which, in our opinion, is the most coherent framework for decision making.
There is interest in probabilistic risk analyses in government as well as academia (
Lodge et al. 2006). Thus, a joint model, expressed in probabilities, has strong ramifications for decision making. At the conceptual level, we need to explicitly acknowledge that the risks due to propagule pressure and invasibility have different behaviours—risk due to propagule pressure is time dependent whereas invasibility may not be. Given that most management actions are based on trying to reduce propagule pressure, management is implicitly concerned with slowing invasions, assuming that propagule pressure is not reduced to zero (e.g. ballast exchange,
Drake et al. 2005;
Minton et al. 2005). That is not to imply that management actions are not important. Indeed, explicit cost–benefit analyses suggest that slowing invasions can be very worthwhile (
Leung et al. 2002).
In conclusion, we recommend that models integrating invasibility and propagule pressure in a probabilistic manner should be adopted where possible (if not, sub-models should still be used as they still offer benefits). Integrated models aid in the conceptualization of the invasion process, permit coherent quantitative predictions of invasion progress over time and have large management implications. While our case study was developed for aquatic systems, the general principles and logic behind joint models should be applicable to terrestrial and other systems as well. The next challenge will be to create forecasting models that incorporate system changes, for example, due to species evolution (
Peterson 2003), environmental change (e.g. global warming,
Peterson 2003;
Neilson et al. 2005), introduction of other invasive species (
Mack et al. 2000) and changing human behaviours (
Leung et al. 2002;
Herborg et al. 2007).