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Urban alien plants in temperate oceanic regions of Europe originate from warmer native ranges

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Abstract

When colonizing new areas, alien plant species success can depend strongly on local environmental conditions. Microclimatic barriers might be the reason why some alien plant species thrive in urban areas, while others prefer rural environments. We tested the hypothesis that the climate in the native range is a good predictor of the urbanity of alien species in the invaded range. The relationship between climate in the native range and the percentage of artificially sealed surfaces (urbanity) at the occurrences of 24 emerging alien plant species, in European areas with a temperate climate (termed oceanic Europe) was evaluated. We found that alien species growing in more urban environments originated from warmer or drier native ranges than found in oceanic Europe. These results have strong conservation implications as climate-warming will likely lift climatic barriers that currently constrain numerous alien plant species to cities, boosting the role of cities as points of entry for invasive plants.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biodiversity and Landscape, TERRA Research Centre, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liège, 5030, Gembloux, Belgium

    Charly Géron, Grégory Mahy & Arnaud Monty

  2. Plants and Ecosystems, University of Antwerp, 2610, Wilrijk, Belgium

    Charly Géron, Jonas J. Lembrechts & Ivan Nijs

  3. Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Jan Borgelt

  4. UR « Écologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés » (EDYSAN, UMR 7058 CNRS), Université de Picardie Jules Verne, 80000, Amiens, France

    Jonathan Lenoir

  5. Royal Meteorological Institute, 1180, Brussels, Belgium

    Rafiq Hamdi

  6. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ghent University, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Rafiq Hamdi

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  1. Charly Géron
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  2. Jonas J. Lembrechts
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  4. Jonathan Lenoir
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  7. Ivan Nijs
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Contributions

C.G., J.J.L., I.N. and A.M. designed the research, J.B. and C.G. performed the native range modelling, C.G. did the analyses and led paper writing, all authors contributed substantially to revisions. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments.

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Correspondence to Charly Géron.

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Géron, C., Lembrechts, J., Borgelt, J. et al. Urban alien plants in temperate oceanic regions of Europe originate from warmer native ranges. Biol Invasions 23, 1765–1779 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-021-02469-9

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