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Ecology

Traits of plant invaders

Nature volume 459, pages 783–784 (2009)Cite this article

Many plants introduced to new habitats have fewer microbial pathogens than when in their home range, and have the ability to grow rapidly. Such a combination may make for especially troublesome immigrants.

The study of invasive species is a lively, not to say contentious, area of basic and applied ecology. It remains difficult to identify the mechanisms that allow plants and animals to become abundant in new landscapes. And debate continues over whether drawing a distinction between 'native' and 'non-native' species helps in analysing the factors that affect species change1,2. In a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Blumenthal and colleagues3 present an assessment of invasive-plant traits that bears on both of these issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tim Seastedt is in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and at INSTAAR, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA. timothy.seastedt@colorado.edu,

    Tim Seastedt

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  1. Tim Seastedt
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Seastedt, T. Traits of plant invaders. Nature 459, 783–784 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/459783a

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