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Correlations between global and regional measures of invasiveness vary with region size

Dawson, W.; Keser, L.H.; Winter, M.; Pyšek, P.; Kartesz, J.; Nishino, M.; Fuentes, N.; Chytrý, M.; Celesti-Grapow, L.; van Kleunen, M.

Correlations between global and regional measures of invasiveness vary with region size Thumbnail


Authors

L.H. Keser

M. Winter

P. Pyšek

J. Kartesz

M. Nishino

N. Fuentes

M. Chytrý

L. Celesti-Grapow

M. van Kleunen



Abstract

We aimedto assess the utility of the Global Compendium of Weeds (GCW) as an indicator of plant invasiveness, by relating it to invasiveness at smaller scales. We correlated two global measures of invasiveness for alien plant species taken from the GCW (the total number of references for each species and the number of continental areas they are reported from), against distribution data from 18 regions (countries and continents). To investigate relationships between correlation strength and region size and spatial resolution (size of distribution units), we conducted meta-analyses. Finally, invasiveness measures were correlated against the number of habitats occupied by alien plant species and their median abundance in those habitats, in fine-scale vegetation plots in the Czech Republic and the state of Montana (USA). The majority of Spearman’s rho coefficients between GCW-derived invasiveness and regional distributions were less than 0.4. Correlation strength was positively related to region size and resolution. Correlations were weaker when the number of habitats occupied by a species, and species abundances within occupied habitats, were considered. We suggest that the use of the GCW as an invasiveness measure is most appropriate for hypotheses posed at coarse, large scales. An exhaustive synthesis of existing regional distributions should provide a more accurate index of the global invasiveness of species.

Citation

Dawson, W., Keser, L., Winter, M., Pyšek, P., Kartesz, J., Nishino, M., …van Kleunen, M. (2013). Correlations between global and regional measures of invasiveness vary with region size. NeoBiota, 16, 59-80. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.16.4351

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 30, 2013
Online Publication Date Apr 8, 2013
Publication Date Apr 8, 2013
Deposit Date Jan 7, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal NeoBiota
Print ISSN 1619-0033
Electronic ISSN 1314-2488
Publisher Pensoft Publishers
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 16
Pages 59-80
DOI https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.16.4351

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2013 Wayne Dawson. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC-BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.




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