A global systematic review of ecological field studies on two major invasive plant species, Ageratina adenophora and Chromolaena odorata

Abstract

Aim Much of what is known about invasion biology is based on research conducted in North America and Europe, leading to limitations and potential biases in our knowledge. We address these limitations by conducting a systematic review to assess the literature on ecological studies of two major tropical and subtropical invasive plant species, Ageratina adenophora and Chromolaena odorata. Our goals were to: (1) collect the literature on the invasion biology of these species by broadly searching five databases (one international and four regional); (2) determine limitations to the international literature available in the ISI Web of Science (WOS); (3) quantitatively summarize the scope of the invasion literature on the two species; and (4) propose future studies based on what we found.Location Global.Methods Using specific search terms, we searched the literature for A. adenophora and C. odorata in the ISI WOS, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Indian Journals, Nepal Journals Online and African Journals Online (AJOL). We extracted information on journal titles, publication years, study area locations, habitats investigated and study focus.Results We found 101 papers for A. adenophora and 61 papers for C. odorata, published from 1987 to 2015. A high percentage of the studies were conducted in China, western and southern Africa, and India. Studies from WOS most frequently focused on the mechanism of invasion, while studies from CNKI and AJOL focused on the impacts of the invader.Main conclusions Web of Science is not sufficient for generalizing about the invasion biology literature, particularly if the goal is a comprehensive assessment that includes areas other than North America, Hawaii, Europe, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. In future systematic reviews, other databases should be used if possible, including those in languages other than English. For future research, several research areas should be studied more thoroughly for A. adenophora and C. odorata invasions, including possible multiple factors responsible for invasion, and impacts of co-occurring invasive species.

Niche expansion of the invasive plant species Ageratina adenophora despite evolutionary constraints

“…The spread of the invasive plant A. adenophora is considered to be a severe problem in more than 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe and North America (Del Guacchio, 2013;Heystek, Wood, Neser, & Kistensamy, 2011;Muniappan, Raman, & Reddy, 2009;Parsons & Cuthbertson, 2001;Qiang, 1998;Yu et al, 2016). Native to Mexico, this apomictic (Bala & Gupta, 2014;Hao et al, 2010), triploid Asteraceae (Baker, 1965;Bala & Gupta, 2014) grows gregariously as a subshrub in moist tropical and subtropical mountainous regions across the globe (Stone, Smith, & Tunison, 1992;Wan et al, 2010;Wang & Wang, 2006;Yu et al, 2016). It adversely affects native biodiversity (Ding, Xu, & Liu, 2007), livestock (Parsons & Cuthbertson, 2001;Tian, Feng, & Liu, 2007) and agricultural productivity (Parsons & Cuthbertson, 2001;Yadav & Tripathi, 1982) of the infested regions.…”

Biology and management of the invasive weed Ageratina adenophora (Asteraceae): current state of knowledge and future research needs

“…In a systematic review, Yu et al . () found 93% of studies on A. adenophora originated from China. Further studies covering all invaded biogeographic regions through international collaborations should provide valuable ecological insights into invasion mechanisms and potentially broadening our understanding of other biological invasions (Yu et al ., ).…”

“…() found 93% of studies on A. adenophora originated from China. Further studies covering all invaded biogeographic regions through international collaborations should provide valuable ecological insights into invasion mechanisms and potentially broadening our understanding of other biological invasions (Yu et al ., ). The roles of phenotypic plasticity or genetic adaptation capability need to be further explored in different introduced ranges to understand their relative contribution to the invasion success of this weed (Zhao et al ., ).…”

Framing Indigenous Bioenergy Partnerships

“…A comprehensive search of recent research articles and grey literature was conducted using ISI Web of Science (WOS), which is considered one of the most comprehensive and extensively used academic databases for literature reviews (Cañas-Guerrero, Mazarrón, Pou-Merina, Calleja-Perucho, & Días-Rubio, 2013). We chose to work with WOS because it is international in scope and captures a large diversity of literature (e.g., books, proceedings, and reports) from multiple databases (Yu, Akin-Fajiye, Thapa Magar, Ren, & Gurevitch, 2016). However, we also took into consideration some of the challenges that occur when using databases such as WOS, such as limitations in searches related to multi-disciplinary literature (Mongeon & Paul-Hus, 2016), and conducted searches within Google Scholar to crosscheck and ensure that key literature was not being excluded.…”