The campus of the University of Pune represents a unique deciduous forest ecosystem as it is highly dominated by an introduced shrub Dalbergia melanoxylon Guill. This campus shows rich herbaceous phytodiversity of native and invasive plants. At present most of the alien weeds are suppressing the native diversity. The morphological and ecophysiological studies clearly revealed their faster growth and biomass production rate, very high reproductive abilities and tolerance to different biotic and abiotic stresses leading to successful invasions. This might be ascribed to their richness in different types of allelochemicals like triterpenes, phenols, steroids, flavonoids bitter principles along with the osmolytes like proline, glycine betaine. This subsequently creates an inhospitable environment to native plants and threatens their survival causing an inception of biodiversity losses. The present attempt may provide some clues to understand the mechanism of their invasion and dominance.
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