With globalisation facilitating the movement of plants and seeds beyond the native range, preventing potentially harmful introductions requires knowledge of what drives the successful establishment and spread of alien plants. Here, we examined global-scale relationships between naturalisation success (incidence and extent) and invasiveness, soil seed bank properties (type and densities) and key species traits (seed mass, seed dormancy and life form) for 2350 species of angiosperms. Naturalisation and invasiveness were strongly associated with the ability to form persistent (vs. transient) seed banks but relatively weakly with seed bank densities and other traits. Our findings suggest that seed bank persistence is a trait that better captures the ability to become naturalised and invasive compared to seed traits more widely available in trait databases. Knowledge of seed persistence can contribute to our ability to predict global naturalisation and invasiveness and to identify potentially invasive flowering plants before they are introduced.

Biodiversity Macroecology and Biogeography University of Goettingen Goettingen Germany

BioInvasions Global Change Macroecology Group University of Vienna Vienna Austria

Centre for Invasion Biology Department of Botany and Zoology Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch South Africa

Department of Biology Botany Unit University of Pisa Pisa Italy

Department of Biology University of Kentucky Lexington KY USA

Department of Biosciences Durham University Durham UK

Department of Ecology Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Czech Republic

Department of Plant and Soil Sciences University of Kentucky Lexington KY USA

Ecology Department of Biology University of Konstanz Konstanz Germany

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research iDiv Halle Jena Leipzig Leipzig Germany

Institute of Botany Department of Invasion Ecology Czech Academy of Sciences Průhonice Czech Republic

Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Taizhou University Taizhou China

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