A scientific team, with the participation of the Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC) and the Pyrenees Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC), created the first database of field studies on the effects of invasive plants in the species, communities and ecosystems native to Europe.
PlantimpactsEurope is the first harmonized database of free access at continental level and is based on data from 266 scientific publications describing the results of 4,259 field studies on 104 invasive species in 29 European countries. The work was published in the journal NeoBiota.
The platform provides information about invasive plants that affect other plants, animals and microbes. This information is displayed based on all trophic levels (herbivores, parasites, plants, pollinators, predators, omnivores, decomposers and symbionts) and numerous species Ecosystem processes.
A third of the studies collected in Plantimpactseurope focus on five invasive species: Reynoutria japonica, Impatiens glandulifera, Solidago Gigantea, Carpobrotus edulis And Robinia pseudoacacia. And more than half of the work was conducted in temperate and boreal forests and temperate grasslands.
However, there are few jobs in the Baltics and the Balkans, in the desert and semi-arid bushland, in subtropical forests and in the high mountains.
The database provides information on whether invasive species are increasing, decreasing, or having a neutral impact on the ecological variable under study
“The database provides information about whether invasive species are increasing, decreasing or having a neutral influence on the ecological variable under study,” he emphasizes. Montserrat VilaEBD researcher and study coordinator.
In this sense, he emphasizes that “Plantimpactseurope will help guide research into the circumstances under which invasive plants can have significant impacts.”
Useful in environmental research and management
As new field studies on the ecological impacts of invasive species are published, it will be necessary to update the database. “We hope that there will be further studies on species that are still locally rare and have a restricted distribution,” says Vilà.
This database is of interest for academic, management and related purposes. Environmental guidelines. It was mainly funded by the European Regional Development Foundation (SUMHAL, LIFEWATCH, POPE). In addition to the EBD-CSIC and the IPE-CSIC, research staff from the University of Seville, the University of Alcalá and the University of Freiburg (Switzerland) were involved in the implementation.
reference:
Montserrat Vilà et al. “Field studies on the ecological impacts of invasive plants in Europe.” NeoBiota (2024).
