Many alien plants use animal vectors for dispersal of their diaspores (zoochory). If alien plants interact with native disperser animals, this can interfere with animal-mediated dispersal of native diaspores. Interference by alien species is known for frugivorous animals dispersing fruits of terrestrial plants by ingestion, transport and egestion (endozoochory). However, less attention has been...

Tokiyo OKIMURA Akira MORI Functional and taxonomic perspectives for understanding the underlying mechanisms of native and alien plant distributions We surveyed the distribution of alien and native plant species and their functional traits on the roadside vegetation. We established 362 quadrats, and measured vegetation, environmental and spatial factors, and also collected functional traits data...

The 2004 Japanese 'Invasive Alien Species Act' was enacted to control invasive alien species and prevent the damage that they cause to ecosystems. The Act defines invasive alien species as those recognised as, or suspected of, causing damage to ecosystems, human safety, agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Invasive alien species are carefully regulated: raising, planting, keeping or transportin...

In response to the global threat of invasive alien species, there has been a proliferation of volunteer-based monitoring programs. The valuable data sets collected through these programs facilitate large-scale, baseline population monitoring. The Invasive Plant Atlas of New England, created in 2001, was the first such regional database and is the only one in which both presence and true absence...

Invasions by alien plants provide a unique opportunity to examine competitive interactions among plants. While resource competition has long been regarded as a major mechanism responsible for successful invasions, given a well-known capacity for many invaders to become dominant and reduce plant diversity in the invaded communities, few studies have measured resource competition directly or have...

A precursor to the Southern African Plant Invaders Atlas (SAPIA) commenced in 1979 when alien invasive woody plants were surveyed along roadsides throughout Gauteng Province (formerly central Transvaal), South Africa (Wells et al. 1980). These surveys were later extended to the remainder of South Africa and were completed in 1993 (Henderson & Musil 1984; Henderson 1989, 1991a,b, 1992, 1998a). T...

The invasion of ecosystems by exotic species is currently viewed as one of the most important sources of biodiversity loss. The largest part of this loss occurs on islands, where indigenous species have often evolved in the absence of strong competition, herbivory, parasitism or predation. As a result, introduced species thrive in those optimal insular ecosystems affecting their plant food, com...

Invasive alien species affect the composition and functioning of invaded ecosystems in many ways, altering ecological interactions that have arisen over evolutionary timescales. Specifically, disruptions to pollination and seed-dispersal mutualistic interactions are often documented, although the profound implications of such impacts are not widely recognized. Such disruptions can occur via the...

Globalization increases the opportunities for unintentionally introduced invasive alien species, especially for insects, and most of these species could damage ecosystems and cause economic loss in China. In this study, we analyzed drivers of the distribution of unintentionally introduced invasive alien insects. Based on the number of unintentionally introduced invasive alien insects and their ...

BACKGROUND Understanding the dimensions of pathways of introduction of alien plants is important for regulating species invasions, but how particular pathways differ in terms of post-invasion success of species they deliver has never been rigorously tested. We asked whether invasion status, distribution and habitat range of 1,007 alien plant species introduced after 1500 A.D. to the Czech Repub...