The Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF) database

Abstract

This dataset provides the Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF) database, version 1.2. GloNAF represents a data compendium on the occurrence and identity of naturalized alien vascular plant taxa across geographic regions (e.g. countries, states, provinces, districts, islands) around the globe. The dataset includes 13,939 taxa and covers 1,029 regions (including 381 islands). The dataset is based on 210 data sources. For each taxon‐by‐region combination, we provide information on whether the taxon is considered to be naturalized in the specific region (i.e. has established self‐sustaining populations in the wild). Non‐native taxa are marked as “alien”, when it is not clear whether they are naturalized. To facilitate alignment with other plant databases, we provide for each taxon the name as given in the original data source and the standardized taxon and family names used by The Plant List Version 1.1 (http://www.theplantlist.org/). We provide an ESRI shapefile including polygons for each region and information on whether it is an island or a mainland region, the country and the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) regions it is part of (TDWG levels 1–4). We also provide several variables that can be used to filter the data according to quality and completeness of alien taxon lists, which vary among the combinations of regions and data sources. A previous version of the GloNAF dataset (version 1.1) has already been used in several studies on, for example, historical spatial flows of taxa between continents and geographical patterns and determinants of naturalization across different taxonomic groups. We intend the updated and expanded GloNAF version presented here to be a global resource useful for studying plant invasions and changes in biodiversity from regional to global scales. We release these data into the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero license waiver (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/). When you use the data in your publication, we request that you cite this data paper. If GloNAF is a major part of the data analyzed in your study, you should consider inviting the GloNAF core team (see Metadata S1: Originators in the Overall project description) as collaborators. If you plan to use the GloNAF dataset, we encourage you to contact the GloNAF core team to check whether there have been recent updates of the dataset, and whether similar analyses are already ongoing.

Nitrogen acquisition of Central European herbaceous plants that differ in their global naturalization success

“…As species that naturally occur in N‐rich habitats are likely to have a higher invasion success (Dostal, Dawson, van Kleunen, Keser, & Fischer, ), we selected the widely and less widely naturalized species to have similar Ellenberg N‐indicator values (Kruskal–Wallis test, χ 2 = 0.904, df = 1, p = 0.342), which indicate the N‐conditions in the natural habitat of the species in Europe (Ellenberg, ). To determine how widely the species are naturalized outside of Germany, we used the Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF) database (version 1.2; https://glonaf.org/; van Kleunen, Pyšek et al, ), which includes data on naturalization success of 13,939 alien plant species in a total of 1,029 regions. Although the classification of species as being widely naturalized or less widely naturalized is subjective, we a priori selected species to be widely naturalized if they have been recorded in >100 GloNAF regions (median = 180, range = 108–364) and to be less widely naturalized if they have been recorded in <50 GloNAF regions (median = 10, range = 1–31; Supporting Information Table S1).…”

Autofertility and self‐compatibility moderately benefit island colonization of plants

“…To test whether the colonization of islands by angiosperm species, irrespective of whether they are native or naturalized, is associated with selfing ability, we combined three comprehensive global plant databases: one on breeding systems of species, one on island and mainland distributions of native species (GIFT; http://gift.uni-goettingen.de) and one on global naturalization success of alien species (GloNAF; van Kleunen et al, ). To obtain information on the selfing ability of each species in the present study, we used a global database on breeding systems of angiosperms (for details on the compilation, see Razanajatovo et al, ).…”

“…To obtain information on the naturalized distribution of the species included in the present study, we used the Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF version 1.1; Pyšek et al, ; van Kleunen et al, ). This database includes 13,168 naturalized plant species and covers 362 islands and 481 mainland regions globally.…”

Competition among native and invasive Phragmites australis populations: An experimental test of the effects of invasion status, genome size, and ploidy level

“…Research in plant invasions has progressed in recent years, with data accumulated in global databases (Dawson et al, ; Pyšek et al, ; van Kleunen et al, , ) not only allowing improvement of our knowledge about the distribution of naturalized species in world regions, but also facilitating deeper insights into the mechanisms and traits associated with successful invasions (e.g., Guo, van Kleunen, et al, ; Razanajatovo et al, ). These studies contribute to the existing body of invasion literature focusing on the roles that individual species traits and their interactions have on invasions (van Kleunen, Weber, & Fischer, ; Küster, Kühn, Bruelheide, & Klotz, ; Pyšek & Richardson, ), acting in concert with other factors (Dawson, Burslem, & Hulme, ; Pyšek et al, ), and depending on the stage of the invasion process (Divíšek et al, ; Moodley, Geerts, Richardson, & Wilson, ; Pyšek et al, ).…”