How indirect interactions shape long-term invasion dynamics in complex ecological communities

Many facets of ecological theory rely on the analysis of invasion processes, and general approaches exist to understand the early stages of an invasion. However, predicting the long-term transformations of communities following an invasion remains a challenging endeavour. We propose an analytical method that uses community structure and invader dynamical features to predict when these impacts can be large, and show it to be applicable across a wide class of dynamical models. Our approach reveals that short-term invasion success and long-term consequences are two distinct axes of variation controlled by different properties of both invader and resident community. Whether a species can invade is controlled by its invasion fitness, which depends on environmental conditions and direct interactions with resident species. But whether this invasion will cause significant transformations, such as extinctions or a regime shift, depends on a specific measure of indirect feedbacks that may involve the entire resident community. Our approach applies to arbitrarily complex communities, from few competing phenotypes in adaptive dynamics to large nonlinear food webs. It hints at new questions to ask as part of any invasion analysis, and suggests that long-term indirect interactions are key determinants of invasion outcomes.