A wide range of approaches has been used to manage the spread of invasive species, yet invaders continue to be a challenge to control. In some cases, management actions have no effect or may even inadvertently benefit the targeted invader. Here, we use the mid‐20th century management of the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta, in the US as a motivating case study to explore the conditions under which such wasted management effort may occur. Introduced in approximately 1940, the fire ant spread widely through the southeast US and became a problematic pest. Historically, fire ants were managed with broad‐spectrum pesticides; unfortunately, these efforts were largely unsuccessful. One hypothesis suggests that, by also killing native ants, mass pesticide application reduced competitive burdens thereby enabling fire ants to invade more quickly than they would in the absence of management. We use a mechanistic competition model to demonstrate the landscape‐level effects of such management. We explicitly model the extent and location of pesticide applications, showing that the same pesticide application can have a positive, neutral, or negative effect on the progress of an invasion, depending on where it is applied on the landscape with respect to the invasion front. When designing management, the target species is often considered alone; however, this work suggests that leveraging existing biotic interactions, specifically competition with native species, can increase the efficacy of management. Our model not only highlights the potential unintended consequences of ignoring biotic interactions, but also provides a framework for developing spatially explicit management strategies that take advantage of these biotic interactions to work smarter, not harder.

中文翻译：

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错误的管理使事情变得更糟：空间明确的控制利用生物相互作用来减缓入侵

人们已经使用了多种方法来控制入侵物种的传播，但入侵者仍然是控制的挑战。在某些情况下，管理行为没有任何效果，甚至可能无意中使目标入侵者受益。在这里，我们采用20世纪中叶对进口红火蚁的管理方式，红火蚁，在美国作为一个激励性的案例研究来探讨在什么情况下可能会出现这种浪费的管理努力。火蚁于 1940 年左右引入，在美国东南部广泛传播，成为一种有问题的害虫。历史上，火蚁是用广谱杀虫剂来管理的。不幸的是，这些努力基本上没有成功。一种假设表明，大规模杀虫剂的施用也杀死了本地蚂蚁，从而减轻了竞争负担，从而使火蚁比在缺乏管理的情况下更快地入侵。我们使用机械竞争模型来证明这种管理的景观水平效应。我们明确地模拟了农药施用的范围和位置，表明相同的农药施用可以对入侵的进展产生积极、中性或消极影响，具体取决于它在景观上相对于入侵前沿的应用位置。在设计管理时，通常单独考虑目标物种；然而，这项工作表明，利用现有的生物相互作用，特别是与本地物种的竞争，可以提高管理效率。我们的模型不仅强调了忽视生物相互作用可能带来的意想不到的后果，而且还提供了一个框架，用于开发空间明确的管理策略，利用这些生物相互作用来更聪明地工作，而不是更努力地工作。