Linking historical ecology and invasion biology: some lessons from European rabbit introductions into the new world before the nineteenth century

Abstract

Historical ecology can provide important insight to understand biological invasions, as some of the most transcendent and successful cases of species introductions occurred hundreds or thousands of years ago. However, studies linking historical ecology and invasion biology are still scarce. In this article, we use the history of European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) introduction into America as an informative case study to highlight the important role of historical ecology in the field of invasion biology. Historical documents show that Spaniards often transported European rabbits to America, starting with the first travels in the fifteenth century. This resulted in frequent European rabbit introduction events into wild ecosystems in both Central and South America. According to these documents, some of these historical introductions were successful, at least temporally, although only a few European wild rabbit populations persisted in the long-term. This suggests that propagule pressure would have been an important complement to the usually recognized colonizer ability of European rabbits, and that some degree of biotic resistance to rabbit invasion could have existed. According to this example and others previously published, historical ecology would be also useful to evaluate the origin of some species whose distributions have been largely altered by humans since long time, to determine when such species were introduced out of their ranges, to prevent future invasions and/or to alert damage caused by invasive species. Overall, our article emphasizes the need for incorporating historical information in the study of invasive species introduced long ago.