BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Since its emergence in the mid‐20th century, invasion biology has matured into a productive research field addressing questions of fundamental and applied importance. Not only has the number of empirical studies increased through time, but also has the number of competing, overlapping and, in some cases, contradictory hypotheses about biological invasions. To make these contradictions and redundancies explicit, and to gain insight into the field’s current theoretical structure, we developed and applied a Delphi approach to create a consensus network of 39 existing invasion hypotheses. RESULTS: The resulting network was analysed with a link‐clustering algorithm that revealed five concept clusters (resource availability, biotic interaction, propagule, trait and Darwin’s clusters) representing complementary areas in the theory of invasion biology. The network also displays hypotheses that link two or more clusters, called connecting hypotheses, which are important in determining network structure. The network indicates hypotheses that are logically linked either positively (77 connections of support) or negatively (that is, they contradict each other; 6 connections). SIGNIFICANCE: The network visually synthesizes how invasion biology’s predominant hypotheses are conceptually related to each other, and thus, reveals an emergent structure – a conceptual map – that can serve as a navigation tool for scholars, practitioners and students, both inside and outside of the field of invasion biology, and guide the development of a more coherent foundation of theory. Additionally, the outlined approach can be more widely applied to create a conceptual map for the larger fields of ecology and biogeography.

中文翻译：

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入侵生物学的概念图：将假设整合到共识网络中

背景和目标：自 20 世纪中叶出现以来，入侵生物学已经成熟为一个富有成效的研究领域，解决具有基础和应用重要性的问题。随着时间的推移，实证研究的数量不仅不断增加，而且关于生物入侵的相互竞争、重叠、在某些情况下甚至相互矛盾的假设也越来越多。为了使这些矛盾和冗余变得明确，并深入了解该领域当前的理论结构，我们开发并应用德尔菲方法来创建 39 个现有入侵假设的共识网络。结果：使用链接聚类算法对所得网络进行了分析，该算法揭示了代表入侵生物学理论中互补领域的五个概念簇（资源可用性、生物相互作用、繁殖体、性状和达尔文簇）。该网络还显示连接两个或多个簇的假设，称为连接假设，这对于确定网络结构很重要。该网络表示逻辑上正相关（77 个支持连接）或负相关（即它们相互矛盾；6 个连接）的假设。意义：该网络直观地综合了入侵生物学的主要假设在概念上如何相互关联，从而揭示了一种新兴结构——概念图——可以作为入侵生物学内外的学者、从业者和学生的导航工具。入侵生物学领域，并指导更连贯的理论基础的发展。此外，概述的方法可以更广泛地应用于为生态学和生物地理学的更大领域创建概念图。