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Alien species in vegetation succession: participation, temporal trends and determining factors in various central European series

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Abstract

A systematic analysis of vegetation successions following disturbance can outline general invasion patterns and contribute to the management of disturbed and natural ecosystems. Here the participation of alien plant species, with special regard to neophytes, was compared in 20 types of successional series in the Czech Republic, central Europe, to detect possible trends and factors supporting their occurrence. Based on 3473 samples of spontaneously established vegetation, we used linear mixed models and multivariate analyses to assess how alien species were influenced by successional age, average annual temperature and precipitation, altitude, geological substrate, and surrounding land-cover. Out of 1035 plant taxa recorded, 839 were natives, 129 archaeophytes and 67 neophytes. The primary or secondary status of series may influence the participation of neophytes but was not determinative. The most invaded successional series were those in deforested landscapes at lower altitudes. Altitude plus climate, substrate and degree of urbanisation shaped the general vegetation pattern and occurrence of aliens. Neophytes were additionally benefited by density of roads and railways and extent of arable land in the surrounding landscape, confirming that these land uses are relevant invasion pathways and should be targeted in prevention strategies. Alien participation is low and mostly declines in later stages, with few neophytes becoming locally dominant over time. This supports spontaneous succession as a suitable restoration option and places the focus on an early detection of potentially problematic species. These findings may contribute to guiding decisions in landscape restoration and the management of disturbed sites under central European conditions.

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Data availability

The database is available upon request on the official website: http://www.restoration-ecology.eu/dass/.

Code availability (software application or custom code)

The code is elaborated with the free R software and is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all our colleagues that agreed to have their data included in our database, namely Martin Adámek, Alena Bartošová, Marek Bastl, Tereza Dudíková, Helena Dvořáková, Martina Entová, Darina Hodačová, Alena Jírová, Alexandra Klaudisová, Jiří Koptík, Petr Koštel, Tomáš Koutecký, Radek Litvín, Ondřej Mudrák, Jan Novák, Petr Petřík, Petr Pyšek, Jiří Sádlo, Lenka Šebelíková, Petr Šmilauer, Zdeněk Špringar, Vojtěch Študent, Lubomír Tichý, Romana Trnková, Zdeněk Vaněček and all those who contributed to the acquisition of primary data. We thank to the associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments which improved the manuscript. We also thank Jan W. Jongepier for language revision.

Funding

The study was supported by funding from JU International Mobility Support (Grant no. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/16_027/0008364), the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (Grant no. 20-06065 S) and the Programme of Strategy AV21 of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, Faculty of Science , University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 1760, 37005, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Miguel Ballesteros, Kamila Vítovcová, Klára Řehounková, Anna Müllerová, Petra Janečková, Petra Pospíšilová & Karel Prach

  2. Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Dukelská 135, 37981, Třeboň, Czech Republic

    Karel Prach

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  1. Miguel Ballesteros
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Contributions

KP, KŘ and MB conceived the study. All authors but MB collected the data. KV and MB assembled data. MB performed the analyses and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed substantially to the revisions and gave final approval for publication.

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Correspondence to Miguel Ballesteros.

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Ballesteros, M., Vítovcová, K., Řehounková, K. et al. Alien species in vegetation succession: participation, temporal trends and determining factors in various central European series. Biol Invasions 23, 3435–3445 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-021-02587-4

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