Common plant species in their native range may have tendencies to naturalise in other regions
Invasive alien plant species are one of the largest groups of invasive taxa and can have significant detrimental impacts on native biodiversity, habitats and ecosystem services. Invasive alien plants can be moved from country to country either intentionally, e.g. as ornamental plants, or accidentally e.g. as seed contaminants of seed or grain. If there is a correlation between a species’ ecology in the native range and the introduced range, this can prove useful for pest risk analysis, especially where a potentially invasive species is new to a given area and there is little scientific evidence of invasiveness in the introduced range. To assess if plant species which have become widely established across the globe are also increasing in occupancy (proportion of grid cells where recorded) in their native ranges, the changes in occurrence of 3 920 native species was modelled for 10 regions in Europe. This was then compared to the global establishment success of each species using the Global Naturalized Alien Flora database (GloNAF). The results showed that global naturalization success was higher for species that have had a consistent high occupancy in their native range (over decades), and for species that have increased their occupancy in the native range. Risk analysis methods do not often consider if a plant species commonly occurs in its native range, though such a factor might help policymakers and managers evaluate the potential for a species to be invasive in other regions.
Sources
Paudel R, Fristoe TS, Kinlock NL, Davis AJS, Zhao W, Van Calster H, Chytrý M, Danihelka J, Decocq G, Ehrendorfer–Schratt L, Guo K, Guo W-Y, Kaplan Z, Pierce S, Wild J, Dawson W, Essl F, Kreft H, Pergl J, Pyšek P, Winter M, van Kleunen M (2025) Many plants naturalized as aliens abroad have also become more common within their native regions Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63293-6