Publication Date:
2015-08-20
Description:
All around the globe, humans have greatly altered the abiotic and biotic environment with ever-increasing speed. One defining feature of the Anthropocene epoch is the erosion of biogeographical barriers by human-mediated dispersal of species into new regions, where they can naturalize and cause ecological, economic and social damage. So far, no comprehensive analysis of the global accumulation and exchange of alien plant species between continents has been performed, primarily because of a lack of data. Here we bridge this knowledge gap by using a unique global database on the occurrences of naturalized alien plant species in 481 mainland and 362 island regions. In total, 13,168 plant species, corresponding to 3.9% of the extant global vascular flora, or approximately the size of the native European flora, have become naturalized somewhere on the globe as a result of human activity. North America has accumulated the largest number of naturalized species, whereas the Pacific Islands show the fastest increase in species numbers with respect to their land area. Continents in the Northern Hemisphere have been the major donors of naturalized alien species to all other continents. Our results quantify for the first time the extent of plant naturalizations worldwide, and illustrate the urgent need for globally integrated efforts to control, manage and understand the spread of alien species.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉van Kleunen, Mark -- Dawson, Wayne -- Essl, Franz -- Pergl, Jan -- Winter, Marten -- Weber, Ewald -- Kreft, Holger -- Weigelt, Patrick -- Kartesz, John -- Nishino, Misako -- Antonova, Liubov A -- Barcelona, Julie F -- Cabezas, Francisco J -- Cardenas, Dairon -- Cardenas-Toro, Juliana -- Castano, Nicolas -- Chacon, Eduardo -- Chatelain, Cyrille -- Ebel, Aleksandr L -- Figueiredo, Estrela -- Fuentes, Nicol -- Groom, Quentin J -- Henderson, Lesley -- Inderjit -- Kupriyanov, Andrey -- Masciadri, Silvana -- Meerman, Jan -- Morozova, Olga -- Moser, Dietmar -- Nickrent, Daniel L -- Patzelt, Annette -- Pelser, Pieter B -- Baptiste, Maria P -- Poopath, Manop -- Schulze, Maria -- Seebens, Hanno -- Shu, Wen-sheng -- Thomas, Jacob -- Velayos, Mauricio -- Wieringa, Jan J -- Pysek, Petr -- England -- Nature. 2015 Sep 3;525(7567):100-3. doi: 10.1038/nature14910. Epub 2015 Aug 19.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Universitatsstrasse 10, D-78464 Konstanz, Germany. ; Division of Conservation, Vegetation and Landscape Ecology, University of Vienna, 1030 Wien, Austria. ; Institute of Botany, Department of Invasion Ecology, The Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-252 43 Pruhonice, Czech Republic. ; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, D-14469 Potsdam, Germany. ; Biodiversity, Macroecology &Conservation Biogeography, University of Gottingen, Busgenweg 1, D-37077 Gottingen, Germany. ; Biota of North America Program (BONAP), Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27516, USA. ; Institute for Aquatic and Ecological Problems, Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, 680000 Khabarovsk, Russia. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand. ; Departamento de Biodiversidad y Conservacion, Real Jardin Botanico, CSIC, Plaza de Murillo 2, 28014 Madrid, Spain. ; Instituto Amazonico de Investigaciones Cientificas Sinchi, Herbario Amazonico Colombiano, 110311 Bogota, Colombia. ; Instituto de Investigacion de Recursos Biologicos Alexander von Humboldt, 111311 Bogota, Colombia. ; Arts Faculty, Monash University, 3145 Melbourne, Australia. ; Escuela de Biologia, Universidad de Costa Rica, 11501 San Jose, Costa Rica. ; Conservatoire et jardin botaniques de la Ville de Geneve, 1292 Geneve, Switzerland. ; Laboratory of Plant Taxonomy and Phylogeny, Tomsk State University, Lenin Prospect 36, 634050, Tomsk, Russia. ; Department of Botany, PO Box 77000, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, 6031 South Africa. ; Centre for Functional Ecology, Departamento de Ciencias da Vida, Universidade de Coimbra, 3001-455 Coimbra, Portugal. ; Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Instituto de Ecologia y Biodiversidad, Universidad de Concepcion, Victoria 631, 403000, Concepcion, Chile. ; Botanic Garden Meise, Domein van Bouchout, B-1860, Meise, Belgium. ; ARC-Plant Protection Research Institute, Pretoria 0001, South Africa. ; Department of Environmental Studies and Centre for Environmental Management Degraded of Ecosystems, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India. ; Institute of Human Ecology SB RAS, Pr. Leningradasky 10, 650065 Kemerovo, Russia. ; Programa de Pos-graduacion en Ecologia, UFRN, Campus Lagoa Nova, 59078-900 Natal, Brazil. ; Oceanologia y Ecologia Marina, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la Republica, Igua, 4225, CP 11400, Montevideo, Uruguay. ; Belize Tropical Forest Studies, PO Box 208, Belmopan, Belize. ; Institute of Geography RAS, Staromonetny, 29, 119017 Moscow, Russia. ; Department of Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois 62901-6509 USA. ; Oman Botanic Garden, Diwan of Royal Court, 122 Muscat, Oman. ; The Forest Herbarium (BKF), Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, Thailand. ; Department of Biology, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, D-06108 Halle, Germany. ; Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, University of Oldenburg, Carl-von-Ossietzky Strasse 9-11, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany. ; State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, College of Ecology and Evolution, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China. ; Department of Botany &Microbiology, College of Science, King Saud University, PO Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. ; Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Botany section), Darwinweg 2, 2333 CR Leiden, the Netherlands. ; Biosystematics Group, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 1, 6708 PB Wageningen, the Netherlands. ; Department of Ecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, CZ-128 44 Vinicna 7, Prague 2, Czech Republic. ; Centre for Invasion Biology, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, Matieland 7602, South Africa.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26287466" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Biodiversity
;
Databases, Factual
;
*Geographic Mapping
;
Introduced Species/*statistics & numerical data
;
North America
;
Pacific Islands
;
Phylogeography
;
*Plants
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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