Economic use of plants is key to their naturalization success

Mark van Kleunen (), Xinyi Xu, Qiang Yang, Noëlie Maurel, Zhijie Zhang, Wayne Dawson, Franz Essl, Holger Kreft, Jan Pergl, Petr Pyšek, Patrick Weigelt, Dietmar Moser, Bernd Lenzner and Trevor S. Fristoe
Additional contact information
Mark van Kleunen: Taizhou University
Xinyi Xu: Fudan University
Qiang Yang: University of Konstanz
Noëlie Maurel: University of Konstanz
Zhijie Zhang: University of Konstanz
Wayne Dawson: Durham University
Franz Essl: University of Vienna
Holger Kreft: University of Goettingen
Jan Pergl: Institute of Botany
Petr Pyšek: Institute of Botany
Patrick Weigelt: University of Goettingen
Dietmar Moser: University of Vienna
Bernd Lenzner: University of Vienna
Trevor S. Fristoe: University of Konstanz

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16982-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16982-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16982-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().