Press release: Where alien plants take root

Nr. 187/2015 - 24.08.2015

Biologists compiled a global overview of naturalisation and spread of alien plant species

(pug) For the first time, a scientific survey provides a global overview of the naturalisation and distribution of plants on continents outside their native ranges. Under the leadership of Professor Mark van Kleunen at the University of Konstanz, biologists from the University of Vienna, The Czech Academy of Sciences, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the University of Göttingen analysed data for 481 mainland areas and 362 islands in collaboration with a further 33 research institutions all over the world. The areas surveyed represent around 83 percent of the Earth’s land surface. According to the researchers’ survey, humankind has been responsible for the establishment of at least 13,168 plant species – approximately 3.9% of the flora worldwide – outside their natural ranges. Involved in the research project are Prof. Dr. Holger Kreft and Dr. Patrick Weigelt, Free Floater research group Biodiversity, Macroecology and Conservation Biogeography of Göttingen University. The results of this research were published in the current issue of the prestigious scientific journal Nature.

North America has become home to the largest number of alien plant species, as almost 6,000 have naturalised in this continent, followed by Europe with more than 4,000. Compared to their area, the Pacific Islands had the most naturalised plant species, indicating that islands are easier to invade than mainland areas. Regions in the Northern Hemisphere are the largest “donors” of naturalised species to other parts of the world, with Europe and non-tropical Asia in the lead. “The higher number of naturalised plant species on islands is alarming, because they easily find unoccupied ecological niches and increasingly replace endemic species,” says Prof. Kreft. The Göttingen scientists study the biodiversity of plants on islands and they contributed many data on island flora to the project.

In the course of the four-year research project, the biologists collected regional lists of naturalised plants from all parts of the world, and compiled them in the global databank called GloNAF - Global Naturalized Alien Flora. “A great challenge was to standardise the names of plant species. There are large regional discrepancies in the names used for the same plant species in different countries”, the lead author Prof. van Kleunen of the University of Konstanz reports.

The survey was based on the statistics for “naturalised” plants. This category of plants includes all species that grow and reproduce in the wild outside their original geographic range. These figures are not exactly the same as the statistics for so-called invasive plant species, those that rapidly spread in their non-native ranges and many of them noticeably impact their new environment as well as other species.

“Our survey is purely descriptive to start with” Prof. van Kleunen explains. “It details where alien plant species have spread worldwide and where they come from. With the GloNAF database that we built, we can now begin to ask questions about the biological mechanisms driving these processes”. What contributes to the spread of alien plant species? Which plant characteristics foster their spread into different environments? How important are evolutionary relationships between the naturalised and native plants? “Our data can now also be used to make predictions about which species could become dominant in which regions”, Prof. van Kleunen concludes.

Original publication:
Mark van Kleunen et al. Global exchange and accumulation of non-nativ plants. Nature 2015. Doi: 10.1038/nature14910, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14910

Contact:
Dr. Patrick Weigelt
University of Göttingen
Free Floater research group Biodiversity, Macroecology and Conservation Biogeography
Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Phone +49 551 39-13761
Email: pweigel@uni-goettingen.de
Web: www.uni-goettingen.de/en/128741.html