Spatiotemporal landscape disturbance contributes to the suppression of competing invaders

Abstract Ecologists have established rich literatures on the relationship between disturbance and biodiversity. Yet for conservation and management purpose, there is no clear mechanism understanding of how disturbance implementation (e.g. pesticide, prescribed burning or human controlled grazing, mowing or flooding) alters the invasion outcome and even for what conditions, the established alien species could be successfully impeded. Here, we synthetically use pair approximation equations and spatial explicit simulations to explore a two-species competitive system which subject to spatial structured landscape disturbance and allow for habitat recovery. After analyzing the stability of non-invasion equilibrium points, we find that spatial aggregation and disturbing frequency (or habitat lifetime) play more important roles than recovering rate when applying disturbance control measure. But if keeping overall disturbance density fixed, the optimal strategy should depend on both spatial and temporal factors. In terms of target invasion system, native community with stronger fecundity has a wider successful control region and this area is not sensitive to invaders’ competitive power. Our results highlight a critical role of spatiotemporal landscape disturbance on invasion suppression and could also give some meaningful understandings of disturbance effect on competition coexistence.