Title
Economic use of plants is key to their naturalization success
Author
Mark van Kleunen
Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation
Author
Xinyi Xu
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, Institute of Biodiversity Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University
Author
Qiang Yang
Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz
... show all
Abstract
Humans cultivate thousands of economic plants (i.e. plants with economic value) outside their native ranges. To analyze how this contributes to naturalization success, we combine global databases on economic uses and naturalization success of the world’s seed plants. Here we show that naturalization likelihood is 18 times higher for economic than non-economic plants. Naturalization success is highest for plants grown as animal food or for environmental uses (e.g. ornamentals), and increases with number of uses. Taxa from the Northern Hemisphere are disproportionately over-represented among economic plants, and economic plants from Asia have the greatest naturalization success. In regional naturalized floras, the percentage of economic plants exceeds the global percentage and increases towards the equator. Phylogenetic patterns in the naturalized flora partly result from phylogenetic patterns in the plants we cultivate. Our study illustrates that accounting for the intentional introduction of economic plants is key to unravelling drivers of plant naturalization.
Keywords
BiodiversityBiogeographyConservation biologyInvasive species
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1370808
Appeared in
Title
Nature Communications
Volume
11
ISSN
2041-1723
Issued
2020
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date issued
2020
Access rights
Rights statement
© The Author(s) 2020

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