Abstract
Biases in invasion science have led to a taxonomic focus on plants, particularly a subset of well-studied plants, and a geographic focus on invasions in Europe and North America. While broader, country-level geographic biases are well known, it is unclear whether these biases extend to a finer scale. This study assessed whether research sites for ten well-studied invasive plants in the U.S. are geographically biased relative to each species’ known invaded range. We compared the distribution, climate, specific geographic variables related to land type (public or private), proximity to roads and universities, and state noxious weed status of research sites reported in 735 scientific articles to the locations of manager records from EDDMapS and iMap Invasives. We attributed each scientific article to one of five study types: impact, invasive trait, mapping, management, and recipient community traits. While the number of research sites was much smaller than the number of manager records, they generally encompassed similar geographies. However, research sites tended to skew towards species’ warm range margins. For all but one species, at least one study type encompassed a significantly different climate space from manager records, suggesting that some level of climatic bias is common. Impact and management studies occurred within the same climate space for all species, suggesting that these studies focus on similar areas—likely those with the greatest impacts and management needs. Manager records were more likely to be found near roads, which are both habitats and vectors for invasive plants, and on public land. Research sites were more likely to be found near a college or university. Overall, we did not find evidence for substantial geographic biases in research studies of these well-studied species, suggesting that researchers are generally doing a good job of exploring the impacts, traits, and management implications of invasions across the extents of the invaded range. However, the consistent climatic biases and spatial clustering of specific study types suggests that researchers and managers should use caution when developing inference for understudied geographic areas.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The datasets generated during and analysed during the current study are available in the Scholarworks @UMass Amherst repository, https://scholarworks.umass.edu/data/118.
References
Adams CR, Galatowitsch SM (2006) Increasing the effectiveness of reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) control in wet meadow restorations. Restor Ecol 14:441–451. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1526-100X.2006.00152.x
Allen MR, Dube OP, Solecki W, Aragón-Durand F, Cramer W, Humphreys S, Kainuma M, Kala J, Mahowald N, Mulugetta Y (2018) Framing and context. In: Masson-Delmotte V, Zhai P, Pörtner H-O, Roberts D, Skea J, Shukla PR, Pirani A, Moufouma-Okia W, Péan C, Pidcock R, Connors S, Matthews JBR, Chen Y, Zhou X, Gomis MI, Lonnoy E, Maycock T, Tignor M, Waterfield T (eds) Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, pp 49–91
Angulo E, Diagne C, Ballesteros-Mejia L, Adamjy T, Ahmed DA, Akulov E, Banerjee AK, Capinha C, Dia CA, Dobigny G, Duboscq-Carra VG, Courchamp F (2021) Non-English languages enrich scientific knowledge: the example of economic costs of biological invasions. Sci Total Environ 775:144441. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144441
Arnesen S, Coleman CE, Meyer SE (2017) Population genetic structure of Bromus tectorum in the mountains of western North America. Am J Bot 104:879–890. https://doi.org/10.3732/ajb.1700038
Bailey SW (2004) Climate change and decreasing herbicide persistence. Pest Manag Sci 60:158–162. https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.785
Bargeron CT, Moorhead DJ (2007) EDDMapS—early detection and distribution mapping system for the southeast exotic pest plant council. Wildland Weeds 10:4–8
Beaury EM, Fusco EJ, Allen JM, Bradley BA (2021) Plant regulatory lists in the United States are reactive and inconsistent. J Appl Ecol 58:1957–1966. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13934
Bellard C, Jeschke JM (2016) A spatial mismatch between invader impacts and research publications. Conserv Biol 30:230–232. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12611
Bhattarai GP, Cronin JT (2014) Hurricane activity and the large-scale pattern of spread of an invasive plant species. PLoS ONE 9:e98478. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098478
Boakes EH, McGowan PJK, Fuller RA, Chang-Qing D, Clark NE, O’Connor K, Mace GM (2010) Distorted views of biodiversity: spatial and temporal bias in species occurrence data. PLoS Biol 8:e1000385. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000385
Bradley BA, Wilcove DS, Oppenheimer M (2010) Climate change increases risk of plant invasion in the Eastern United States. Biol Invasions 12:1855–1872. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-009-9597-y
Bradley BA, Curtis CA, Fusco EJ, Abatzoglou JT, Balch JK, Dadashi S, Tuanmu M-N (2018) Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) distribution in the intermountain Western United States and its relationship to fire frequency, seasonality, and ignitions. Biol Invasions 20:1493–1506. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-017-1641-8
Buerger A, Howe K, Jacquart E, Chandler M, Culley T, Evans C, Kearns K, Schutzki R, Van RL (2016) Risk assessments for invasive plants: a midwestern U.S. comparison. Invasive Plant Sci Manag 9:41–54. https://doi.org/10.1614/IPSM-D-15-00018.1
CABI (2023) CABI compendium. CAB International, Wallingford, UK. https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/.
Christen DC, Matlack GR (2009) The habitat and conduit functions of roads in the spread of three invasive plant species. Biol Invasions 11:453–465. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-008-9262-x
Colautti RI, Barrett SCH (2013) Rapid adaptation to climate facilitates range expansion of an invasive plant. Science 342:364–366. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1242121
Colautti RI, MacIsaac HJ (2004) A neutral terminology to define ‘invasive’ species. Divers Distrib 10(2):135–141. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1366-9516.2004.00061.x
Collins A, Hart EM, Molofsky J (2010) Differential response to frequency-dependent interactions: an experimental test using genotypes of an invasive grass. Oecologia 164:959–969. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1719-9
Craine EB, Evankow A, Wolfson KB, Dalton K, Swedlund H, Bowen C, Heschel MS (2016) Physiological response of Tamarix ramosissima (Tamaricaceae) to a biological control agent. Western N Am Nat 76:339–351. https://doi.org/10.3398/064.076.0310
Crystal-Ornelas R, Lockwood JL (2020) The ‘known unknowns’ of invasive species impact measurement. Biol Invasions 22:1513–1525. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-020-02200-0
Daru BH, Park DS, Primack RB, Willis CG, Barrington DS, Whitfeld TJS, Seidler TG, Sweeney PW, Foster DR, Ellison AM, Davis CC (2018) Widespread sampling biases in herbaria revealed from large-scale digitization. New Phytol 217:939–955. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.14855
EDDMapS (2023) Data statistics. https://www.eddmaps.org/tools/stats.cfm
George K, Ziska LH, Bunce JA, Quebedeaux B, Hom JL, Wolf J, Teasdale JR (2009) Macroclimate associated with urbanization increases the rate of secondary succession from fallow soil. Oecologia 159:637–647
Gómez-Aparicio L, Canham CD (2008) Neighbourhood analyses of the allelopathic effects of the invasive tree Ailanthus altissima in temperate forests. J Ecol 96:447–458. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2745.2007.01352.x
Graham CH, Ferrier S, Huettman F, Moritz C, Peterson AT (2004) New developments in museum-based informatics and applications in biodiversity analysis. Trends Ecol Evol 19:497–503. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2004.07.006
Hager HA (2004) Differential effects of typha litter and plants on invasive Lythrum Salicaria seedling survival and growth. Biol Invasions 6:433–444. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:BINV.0000041558.22300.3a
Haubrock PJ, Cuthbert RN, Hudgins EJ, Crystal-Ornelas R, Kourantidou M, Moodley D, Liu C, Turbelin AJ, Leroy B, Courchamp F (2022) Geographic and taxonomic trends of rising biological invasion costs. Sci Total Environ 817:152948
Hellmann JJ, Byers JE, Bierwagen BG, Dukes JS (2008) Five potential consequences of climate change for invasive species. Conserv Biol 22:534–543. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00951.x
Hou Q-Q, Chen B-M, Peng S-L, Chen L-Y (2014) Effects of extreme temperature on seedling establishment of nonnative invasive plants. Biol Invasions 16:2049–2061. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-014-0647-8
Hovick SM, Carson WP (2015) Tailoring biocontrol to maximize top-down effects: on the importance of underlying site fertility. Ecol Appl 25:125–139. https://doi.org/10.1890/13-2050.1
Hulme PE, Pyšek P, Jarošík V, Pergl J, Schaffner U, Vilà M (2013) Bias and error in understanding plant invasion impacts. Trends Ecol Evol 28:212–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2012.10.010
ITIS (2020) Integrated taxonomic information system (ITIS). http://www.itis.gov. Accessed 07 Jan 2020
Jarnevich CS, Holcombe TR, Bella EM, Carlson ML, Graziano G, Lamb M, Seefeldt SS, Morisette J (2014) Cross-scale assessment of potential habitat shifts in a rapidly changing climate. Invasive Plant Sci Manag 7:491–502. https://doi.org/10.1614/IPSM-D-13-00071.1
Jenkins CN, Van Houtan KS, Pimm SL, Sexton JO (2015) US protected lands mismatch biodiversity priorities. Proc Natl Acad Sci 112:5081–5086. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418034112
Jeschke JM, Aparicio LG, Haider S, Heger T, Lortie CJ, Pyšek P, Strayer DL (2012) Taxonomic bias and lack of cross-taxonomic studies in invasion biology. Front Ecol Environ 10:349–350. https://doi.org/10.1890/12.WB.016
Jodoin Y, Lavoie C, Villeneuve P, Theriault M, Beaulieu J, Belzile F (2008) Highways as corridors and habitats for the invasive common reed Phragmites australis in Quebec, Canada. J Appl Ecol 45:459–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2007.01362.x
Kadmon R, Farber O, Danin A (2004) Effect of roadside bias on the accuracy of predictive maps produced by bioclimatic models. Ecol Appl 14:401–413. https://doi.org/10.1890/02-5364
Kaproth MA, McGraw JB (2008) Seed viability and dispersal of the wind-dispersed invasive Ailanthus altissima in aqueous environments. For Sci 54:490–496. https://doi.org/10.1093/forestscience/54.5.490
Knapp PA (1996) Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) dominance in the Great Basin Desert: history, persistence, and influences to human activities. Glob Environ Change 6:37–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/0959-3780(95)00112-3
Laginhas BB, Bradley BA (2022) Global plant invaders: a compendium of invasive plant taxa documented by the peer-reviewed literature. Ecology 103(2):e03569
Laginhas BB, Fertakos ME, Bradley BA (2022) We don't know what we're missing: evidence of a vastly undersampled invasive plant pool. Ecol Appl .e2776
Lakoba VT, Brooks RK, Haak DC, Barney JN (2020) An analysis of US state regulated weed lists: a discordance between biology and policy. Bioscience 70:804–813. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaa081
Lavoie C, Dufresne C, Delisle F (2005) The spread of reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea) in Québec: a spatio-temporal perspective. Écoscience 12:366–375. https://doi.org/10.2980/i1195-6860-12-3-366.1
Lowry E, Rollinson EJ, Laybourn AJ, Scott TE, Aiello-Lammens ME, Gray SM, Mickley J, Gurevitch J (2013) Biological invasions: a field synopsis, systematic review, and database of the literature. Ecol Evol 3:182–196. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.431
MacDougall AS, Turkington R (2005) Are invasive species the drivers or passengers of change in degraded ecosystems? Ecology 86:42–55. https://doi.org/10.1890/04-0669
Mahood Q, Van Eerd D, Irvin E (2014) Searching for grey literature for systematic reviews: challenges and benefits. Res Synth Methods 5(3):221–234
Mainka SA, Howard GW (2010) Climate change and invasive species: double jeopardy. Integr Zool 5:102–111. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-4877.2010.00193.x
Martin LJ, Blossey B, Ellis E (2012) Mapping where ecologists work: biases in the global distribution of terrestrial ecological observations. Front Ecol Environ 10:195–201. https://doi.org/10.1890/110154
Martinez AE (2017) Sensitivity of modeled channel hydraulic variables to invasive and native riparian vegetation. Int J Appl Geospat Res (IJAGR) 8:47–61
Matzrafi M, Seiwert B, Reemtsma T, Rubin B, Peleg Z (2016) Climate change increases the risk of herbicide-resistant weeds due to enhanced detoxification. Planta 244:1217–1227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-016-2577-4
McCaughey TL, Stephenson GR (2000) Time from flowering to seed viability in purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). Aquat Bot 66:57–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3770(99)00018-2
McGlynn CA (2009) Native and invasive plant interactions in wetlands and the minimal role of invasiveness. Biol Invasions 11:1929–1939. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-008-9370-7
Menuz DR, Kettenring KM (2013) The importance of roads, nutrients, and climate for invasive plant establishment in riparian areas in the northwestern United States. Biol Invasions 15:1601–1612. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-012-0395-6
Meyerson LA, Cronin JT, Bhattarai GP, Brix H, Lambertini C, Lučanová M, Rinehart S, Suda J, Pyšek P (2016) Do ploidy level and nuclear genome size and latitude of origin modify the expression of Phragmites australis traits and interactions with herbivores? Biol Invasions 18:2531–2549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-016-1200-8
Narumalani S, Mishra DR, Wilson R, Reece P, Kohler A (2009) Detecting and mapping four invasive species along the floodplain of North Platte River, Nebraska. Weed Technol 23:99–107. https://doi.org/10.1614/WT-08-007.1
NatureServe (2019) iMapInvasives: an online data system supporting strategic invasive species management. http://imapinvasives.org. Accessed 10 Feb 2019
Nuñez MA, Barlow J, Cadotte M, Lucas K, Newton E, Pettorelli N, Stephens P (2019) Assessing the uneven global distribution of readership, submissions and publications in applied ecology: obvious problems without obvious solutions. J Appl Ecol 56:4–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13319
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Geographic Information Sciences and Technology Group (2010) Colleges and universities. https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/4f4e4acee4b07f02db67fb39
O’Neil D (2018) English as the lingua franca of international publishing. World Englishes 37(2):146–165
Peter CR, Burdick DM (2010) Can plant competition and diversity reduce the growth and survival of exotic Phragmites australis invading a tidal marsh? Estuaries Coasts 33:1225–1236. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-010-9328-8
PRISM Climate Group (2004) 30-year normals. Oregon State University.: http://prism.oregonstate.edu. Accessed 07 Jan 2020
Pyšek P, Richardson DM, Jarošík V (2006) Who cites who in the invasion zoo: insights from an analysis of the most highly cited papers in invasion ecology. Preslia 78:437–468
Pyšek P, Richardson DM, Pergl J, Jarošík V, Sixtová Z, Weber E (2008) Geographical and taxonomic biases in invasion ecology. Trends Ecol Evol 23:237–244. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2008.02.002
Pyšek P, Skálová H, Čuda J, Guo W-Y, Suda J, Doležal J, Kauzál O, Lambertini C, Lučanová M, Mandáková T, Moravcová L, Pyšková K, Brix H, Meyerson LA (2018) Small genome separates native and invasive populations in an ecologically important cosmopolitan grass. Ecology 99:79–90. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2068
Quinn LD, Barney JN, McCubbins JSN, Endres AB (2013) Navigating the “noxious” and “invasive” regulatory landscape: suggestions for improved regulation. Bioscience 63:124–131. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2013.63.2.8
Rose DC, Sutherland WJ, Amano T, González-Varo JP, Robertson RJ, Simmons BI, Wauchope HS, Kovacs E, Durán AP, Vadrot AB, Mukherjee N (2018) The major barriers to evidence-informed conservation policy and possible solutions. Conserv Lett 11(5):e12564. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12564
Rotholz E, Mandelik Y (2013) Roadside habitats: effects on diversity and composition of plant, arthropod, and small mammal communities. Biodivers Conserv 22:1017–1031. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-013-0465-9
Shearin ZRC, Filipek M, Desai R, Bickford WA, Kowalski KP, Clay K (2018) Fungal endophytes from seeds of invasive, non-native Phragmites australis and their potential role in germination and seedling growth. Plant Soil 422:183–194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3241-x
Shi J, Macel M, Tielbörger K, Verhoeven KJF (2018) Effects of admixture in native and invasive populations of Lythrum salicaria. Biol Invasions 20:2381–2393. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-018-1707-2
Skinner K, Smith L, Rice P (2000) Using noxious weed lists to prioritize targets for developing weed management strategies. Weed Sci 48:640–644. https://doi.org/10.1614/0043-1745(2000)048[0640:UNWLTP]2.0.CO;2
Stolar J, Nielsen SE (2015) Accounting for spatially biased sampling effort in presence-only species distribution modelling. Divers Distrib 21:595–608. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12279
Stricker KB, Hagan D, Flory SL (2015) Improving methods to evaluate the impacts of plant invasions: lessons from 40 years of research. AoB Plants. https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plv028
Tekiela DR, Barney JN (2017) Not all roads lead to Rome: a meta-analysis of invasive plant impact methodology. Invasive Plant Sci Manag 10:304–312. https://doi.org/10.1017/inp.2017.39
Uddin MN, Robinson RW (2018) Can nutrient enrichment influence the invasion of Phragmites australis? Sci Total Environ 613–614:1449–1459. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2017.06.131
U.S. Census Bureau (2016) TIGER/Line Shapefiles. https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html. Accessed 01/2016
U.S. Census Bureau (2021) 2020 population distribution in the United States and Puerto Rico. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/geo/population-distribution-2020.html
U.S. EPA (2008) Effects of climate change on aquatic invasive species and implications for management and research (Final Report). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-08/014
Varanasi A, Prasad PV, Jugulam M (2016) Impact of climate change factors on weeds and herbicide efficacy. Adv Agron 135:107–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.agron.2015.09.002
Vilà M, Ibáñez I (2011) Plant invasions in the landscape. Landsc Ecol 26:461–472. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-011-9585-3
Web of Science (2020) Web of science. www.webofknowledge.com. Accessed 07 Sept 2019
Wiesenborn WD (2005) Biomass of arthropod trophic levels on Tamarix ramosissima (Tamaricaceae) branches. Environ Entomol 34:656–663. https://doi.org/10.1603/0046-225X-34.3.656
Williams V-RJ, Sahli HF (2016) A comparison of herbivore damage on three invasive plants and their native congeners: implications for the enemy release hypothesis. Castanea 81:128–137
Ziska LH (2016) The role of climate change and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide on weed management: herbicide efficacy. Agric Ecosyst Environ 231:304–309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2016.07.014
Acknowledgements
We thank Eve Beaury, Evan Johnson, and Courtney O’Connell for their work with data extraction and article searches. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback on this article. Funding provided from the Fonds de Recherche Nature et Technologie Québec, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station and the Department of Environmental Conservation under Project No. MAS00033, and by Grant No. G19AC00091 from the U.S. Geological Survey and a Department of Interior Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center graduate fellowship awarded to L. Munro. Author contributions: LM and BB conceived of the idea. BL created the data extraction protocol. LM and BG collected the data. LM analyzed the data. LM and BB led the writing with contributions from all authors.
Funding
Funding provided from the Fonds de Recherche Nature et Technologie Québec, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station and the Department of Environmental Conservation under Project No. MAS00033, and by Grant No. G19AC00091 from the U.S. Geological Survey and a Department of Interior Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center graduate fellowship awarded to L. Munro.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Munro, L., Griffin, B., Laginhas, B.B. et al. Does invasion science encompass the invaded range? A comparison of the geographies of invasion science versus management in the U.S.. Biol Invasions 26, 797–815 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-023-03208-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-023-03208-y