Alien plants of Europe: an overview of available national and regional inventories
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| Citation | |
| Description | The detailed knowledge of the alien species pool in Europe including residence time and invasion status of introduced plants is crucial for macroecological research of plant invasions. The development of inventories of alien floras in many European countries started in the 1990s based on the collation and expert evaluation of available floristic records. Subsequently, continental-scale databases containing regional data on alien plants were developed, such as DAISIE, GloNAF and Euro+Med PlantBase. However, there are still gaps and inconsistencies among existing databases in terms of revision, completeness, taxonomy, data quality and consistency of species categorizations. We compiled 111 recently published articles and online national or regional alien plant inventories for 56 European territories (countries or large islands and archipelagos with distinct history and biogeography). We unified species nomenclature, residence and invasion status categories and other information provided, using a standardised methodological approach. The highest numbers of aliens were reported from Belgium (2289 species), Norway (1750), United Kingdom (1713) and the Czech Republic (1561). The full categorization of invasion status was available only for 24 (43.6%) European territories. In total, we identified 7208 alien plant species of which 553 were hybrids and cultivars. According to their residence time, 93 plant species were assessed exclusively as archaeophytes in all countries where reported, 565 as archaeophytes and neophytes in different parts of Europe, 3919 species were exclusively neophytes, and 2588 species received undefined alien status. We identified 2436 alien species with casual status, 2414 that were classified as naturalized and 1045 species that reached the invasive status in at least one of the European territories. Country-based species status data obtained from the published checklists will become part of the recently developed FloraVeg.EU online database. |
| Related projects: |