Interaction between Invasive and Native Plants
A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2023) | Viewed by 10958
Special Issue Editors
Interests: biological invasions; evolution; rapid adaptation; soil feedback; climate change
2. Department of Applied Biology, Technical University of Kenya, Nairobi P.O. Box 52428-00200, Kenya
Interests: invasive plants; evolutionary ecology; plant-herbivore interactions; plant ecology; conservation biology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Biological invasion by exotic plant species is considered to be one of the most important threats to native biodiversity. Therefore, understanding the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms and processes that underlie the invasiveness of exotic plant species remains a major goal in ecology. Invasive plants can impact recipient native communities directly through competition for resources (e.g., nutrients and moisture) and indirectly through allelopathy, apparent competition (i.e., through shared natural enemies), and shared mutualists. Consequently, several hypotheses that invoke interactions between exotic plant species and their enemies, mutualists, and plant competitors have been proposed and tested with the aim of explaining plant invasion success. However, much remains unexplored with respect to how invasions by exotic plants may interact with other components of global environmental change including, but not limited to climate change, light pollution, nutrient enrichment, and plastic pollution to affect recipient communities and ecosystems. A growing number of studies indicate that there are cases wherein some populations of native plant species can evolve adaptation to strong competition from invasive plants and persist to co-occur with invaders. However, we still lack a predictive understanding of under what environmental conditions native plants can evolve adaptation to invasive plants. This Special Issue will contain selected papers that report on the mechanisms that underly interactions between invasive plants and native plants under various biotic and abiotic conditions, and the ecosystem-level consequences of the interactions. We welcome any conceptual or empirical work that focuses on any taxa at any spatial scale (local to global). We especially encourage submissions from experiments that elucidate the mechanisms that underlie the impacts of invasive plants on recipient communities and ecosystems across a broad range of biotic and abiotic conditions.
Prof. Dr. Junmin Li
Dr. Ayub M.O. Oduor
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- invasive plants
- native plants
- interactive effect
- adaptive evolution
- allelopathy
- interspecific competition
- abiotic stress
- biotic factors
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