Authors
Mark Van Kleunen, Wayne Dawson, Franz Essl, Jan Pergl, Marten Winter, Ewald Weber, Holger Kreft, Patrick Weigelt, John Kartesz, Misako Nishino, Liubov A Antonova, Julie F Barcelona, Francisco J Cabezas, Dairon Cárdenas, Juliana Cárdenas-Toro, Nicolás Castaño, Eduardo Chacón, Cyrille Chatelain, Aleksandr L Ebel, Estrela Figueiredo, Nicol Fuentes, Quentin J Groom, Lesley Henderson, Inderjit, Andrey Kupriyanov, Silvana Masciadri, Jan Meerman, Olga Morozova, Dietmar Moser, Daniel L Nickrent, Annette Patzelt, Pieter B Pelser, Maria P Baptiste, Manop Poopath, Maria Schulze, Hanno Seebens, Wen-sheng Shu, Jacob Thomas, Mauricio Velayos, Jan J Wieringa, Petr Pyšek
Publication date
2015/9/3
Journal
Nature
Volume
525
Issue
7567
Pages
100-103
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
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 …
Scholar articles
M Van Kleunen, W Dawson, F Essl, J Pergl, M Winter… - Nature, 2015