engleski

Do invasive plants in Croatia share same environmental envelopes?

We have compared impact of three groups of environmental variables in explaining distribution of invasive plants in Croatia, i.e. climate data (presented with seasonal precipitation and mean temperature), basic topographical variables (slope, and sine and cosine of aspect) and proxies for disturbance (human population density, distance from the settlements and distance from the traffic infrastructure i.e. roads and railways). While topography variables seems to be almost irrelevant, those serving as proxies for disturbance turns out to be more important than climatic ones for significant share of invasive species (e.g. Amaranthus retroflexus, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Chamomila suaveolens, Conyza bonariensis, Galinsoga parviflora, Reynoutria x bohemica, Veronica persica), with particular emphasis on the population density. Among the seasonal climatic variables, the amount of precipitation was more important in explaining current distribution then the mean temperature, with exception of spring, although latter was observed in only few species with lower significance (e.g. Amorpha fruticosa, Acer negundo). Although not included in these models, and not easy to implement, it seems that invasion pathways (partly included through the disturbance proxies) could play one of the main roles in explaining significant number of invasive plant distribution. There is no doubt that prevailing environmental conditions sets up the scene, but pathways might be dominant factor that do the casting i.e. selecting the species that will have chance to express their invasiveness.

Croatia; distribution; modelling; GIS

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