Biological invasions are major drivers of biodiversity change. Alien mammals are par-ticularly concerning in Europe, where their expansion remains unabated, though thedriving factors are still unclear. Well-documented introductions and distributions inthis continent provide a unique opportunity to understand how human activities influ-enced this expansion. We modelled the potential alien ranges of 46 establishe...
Biological invasions are a main cause of biodiversity loss, prompting international agreements and national policies aimed at preventing and managing the introduction, establishment, spread, and impacts of alien species. However, whether these measures have effectively reduced invasions remains uncertain. In this study, we compared the absolute number of established alien species and changes in invasion rates, ...
The diverse biotas of the world’s mountains face a challenging future due to increasing threats like climate change, land-use change, and biological invasions, the last being particularly understudied in these regions. Here we compile occurrence records for 717 alien vertebrate species distributed in 2984 mountains worldwide. We analyze their distribution, biogeographic origin, presence in protected areas, and ...
Aim: Spreading infectious diseases associated with introduced pathogens can have devastating effects on native biota and human livelihoods. We analyse the global distribution of 100 major alien fungal and oomycete pathogens with substantial socio-economic and environmental impacts and examine their taxonomy, ecological characteristics, temporal accumulation trajectories, regional hot- and coldspots of taxon ric...
Aim: Spreading infectious diseases associated with introduced pathogens can have devastating effects on native biota and human livelihoods. We analyse the global distribution of 100 major alien fungal and oomycete pathogens with substantial socio-economic and environmental impacts and examine their taxonomy, ecological characteristics, temporal accumulation trajectories, regional hot- and coldspots of taxon ric...
The ecological impact of non-native species arises from their establishment in local assemblages. However, the rates of non-native spread in new regions and their determinants have not been comprehensively studied. Here, we combined global databases documenting the occurrence of non-native species and residence of non-native birds, mammals, and vascular plants at regional and local scales to describe how the li...
The Anthropocene is characterized by a rapid pace of environmental change and is causing a multitude of biotic responses, including those that affect the spatial distribution of species. Lagged responses are frequent and species distributions and assemblages are consequently pushed into a disequilibrium state. How the characteristics of environmental change—for example, gradual ‘press’ disturbances such as risi...
While the regional distribution of non-native species is increasingly well documented for some taxa, global analyses of non-native species in local assemblages are still missing. Here, we use a worldwide collection of assemblages from five taxa - ants, birds, mammals, spiders and vascular plants - to assess whether the incidence, frequency and proportions of naturalised nonnative species depend on type and inte...
Species abundance distributions (SADs) link species richness with species abundances and are an important tool in the quantitative analysis of ecological communities. Niche-based and sample-based SAD models predict different spatial scaling properties of SAD parameters. However, empirical research on SAD scaling properties is largely missing. Here we extracted percentage cover values of all occurring vascular p...