Getting the Right Traits: Reproductive and Dispersal Characteristics Predict the Invasiveness of Herbaceous Plant Species - Open access research article

Aug 25, 2026

To understand how species traits shape plant invasion, the study compiles comparative data on 20 reproductive and dispersal traits across 93 herbaceous alien species in the Czech Republic, Central Europe, introduced after 1500 AD. Invasion outcome is described using invasiveness status and dominance in plant communities via mean cover in vegetation plots. Regression/classification trees evaluate how reproductive and dispersal traits influence invasion success across life stages, and whether including trait information improves prediction beyond commonly used characteristics such as height, life history, and residence time.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

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Abstract

Introduction

Trait-based prediction in invasion ecology

Context and stage dependence in invasions

OPEN ACCESS Citation: Moravcová L, Pyšek P, Jarošík V, Pergl J (2015) Getting the Right Traits: Reproductive and Dispersal Characteristics Predict the Invasiveness of Herbaceous Plant Species. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0123634. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0123634 Academic Editor: Bo Li, Fudan University, CHINA Received: September 8, 2014 Accepted: February 27, 2015 Published: April 23, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Moravcová et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Data on species traits are available in Moravcová et al. 2010. (Stated in Ms.) Species localites are available in Kubešová et al. 2010 (Stated in Ms.) . Funding: This study was funded by the Czech Science Foundation (grant no. 206/05/0323 and project no. 14-36079G, Centre of Excellence PLADIAS), long-term research development project RVO 67985939 (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), institutional resources of the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, and PP acknowledges the support of a Praemium Academiae award from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The funders had no role in study RESEARCH ARTICLE Getting the Right Traits: Reproductive and Dispersal Characteristics Predict the Invasiveness of Herbaceous Plant Species Lenka Moravcová1 *, Petr Pyšek1,2, Vojtěch Jarošík2,1†, Jan Pergl1 1 Department of Invasion Ecology, Institute of Botany, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Průhonice, Czech Republic, 2 Department of Ecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic † Deceased. * [lenka.moravcova@ibot.cas.cz](lenka.moravcova@ibot.cas.cz) Abstract To better understand the effect of species traits on plant invasion, we collected comparative data on 20 reproductive and dispersal traits of 93 herbaceous alien species in the Czech Republic, central Europe, introduced after 1500 A. D. We explain plant invasion success, expressed by two measures: invasiveness, i.e. whether the species is naturalized but noninvasive, or invasive; and dominance in plant communities expressed as the mean cover in vegetation plots. We also tested how important reproductive and dispersal traits are in models including other characteristics generally known to predict invasion outcome, such as plant height, life history and residence time. By using regression/classification trees we show that the biological traits affect invasion success at all life stages, from reproduction (seed production) to dispersal (propagule properties), and the ability to compete with resident species (height) . By including species traits information not usually available in multispecies analyses, we provide evidence that traits do play important role in determining the outcome of invasion and can be used to distinguish between alien species that reach the final stage of the invasion process and dominate the local communities from those that do not. No effect of taxonomy ascertained in regression and classification trees indicates that the role of traits in invasiveness should be assessed primarily at the species level. Introduction Species traits associated with invasiveness has been a central theme in invasion ecology since biological invasions started to be intensively studied in the 1980s [ 1]. After 30 years of research, predicting which species will become invasive still represents an ultimate goal of invasion ecologists [2–6]. After the initial period of rather naïve, simple comparisons of species traits [7];(see [8] for a review), invasion ecologists realized the complexity of the issue and started to address it with sophisticated frameworks [9] and statistical models that take confounding factors and correlative structure of data into account [ 10–16] . These studies contradicted the view that traits cann

FAQs

What dataset and traits are used to study plant invasiveness?

The research collects comparative data on 20 reproductive and dispersal traits for 93 herbaceous alien species in the Czech Republic, introduced after 1500 AD.

How is “invasion success” measured in the study?

Success is captured by two measures: invasiveness status (naturalized but noninvasive vs invasive) and dominance in plant communities expressed as mean cover in vegetation plots.

How do the authors analyze the relationship between traits and invasion outcomes?

They use regression/classification trees to show that biological traits affect invasion success at multiple life stages, from seed production to dispersal traits, and also relate to competitive ability using plant height.

Aug 25, 2026

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