Invasive species may undergo rapid change as they invade. Native species persisting in invaded areas may also experience rapid change over this short timescale relative to native populations in uninvaded areas. We investigated the response of the native Achillea millefolium to soil from Holcus lanatus-invaded and uninvaded areas, and we sought to determine whether differential responses between...

During the past centuries, humans have introduced many plant species in areas where they do not naturally occur. Some of these species establish populations and in some cases become invasive, causing economic and ecological damage. Which factors determine the success of non-native plants is still incompletely understood, but the absence of natural enemies in the invaded area (Enemy Release Hypo...

Many animal-pollinated plant species have been introduced to non-native regions without their usual pollinators. Nevertheless, some of these alien species managed to establish reproducing naturalized populations, which might negatively affect native plants. Recent studies have shown that many naturalized alien species can readily attract native pollinators. However, it is not known whether alie...

Invasive species success may depend on ecophysiological attributes present in their native area or derived from changes that took place in the invaded environment. We studied the growth and photosynthetic capacity of Berberis darwinii shrubs growing under different light conditions (gap, forest edge and below the canopy) in their native area of Patagonia, Argentina. Leaf photosynthesis results ...

Fire disturbance is considered a major factor in the promotion of non-native plant species. Non-native grasses are adapted to fire and can alter environmental conditions and reduce resource availability in native coastal sage scrub and chaparral communities of southern California. In these communities persistence of non-native grasses following fire can inhibit establishment and growth of woody...

Freshwater plants affect the ecosystem functioning of shallow aquatic ecosystems. However, because native plants are threatened by environmental change such as eutrophication, global warming and biological invasions, continued ecosystem functioning may be at risk. In this study, we explored how the growth of native and non-native plant species in eutrophic, warm conditions impacts two plant eco...

The tree Melaleuca quinquenervia invades all types of habitats of South Florida leading to up to 80% loss of aboveground diversity. To examine impacts on the belowground ecosystem, we investigated the composition and diversity of nematodes from soils dominated by the invasive tree and compared them with soils supporting native plant communities at six locations across the Florida Everglades ove...

Adaptive and non-adaptive evolutionary processes are likely to play important roles in biological invasions but their relative importance has hardly ever been quantified. Moreover, although genetic differences between populations in their native versus invasive ranges may simply reflect different positions along a genetic latitudinal cline, this has rarely been controlled for. To study non-adap...

One of the significant threats to global biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is the spread of invasive plant species (Mooney and Cleland, 2001). Continuing anthropogenic related disturbances such as land conversion, grazing, and habitat fragmentation, combined with international trade and climate change indicate that these trends are likely to continue (Zedler and Scheid, 1988). In this cont...

Invasions by alien plants can change the large-scale functioning of native ecosystems and alter the population dynamics and community structure of native species. Such ecosystem-level changes affect the ways local systems interact with surrounding ecosystems, with downstream ecosystems and groundwater, and with the atmosphere. Large-scale changes in ecosystems caused by biological invasions rep...