The redistribution of alien species across the globe accelerated with the start of European colonialism. European powers were responsible for the deliberate and accidental transportation, introduction and establishment of alien species throughout their occupied territories and the metropolitan state. Here, we show that these activities left a lasting imprint on the global distribution of alien plants. Specifically, we investigated how four European empires (British, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch) structured current alien floras worldwide. We found that compositional similarity is higher than expected among regions that once were occupied by the same empire. Further, we provide strong evidence that floristic similarity between regions occupied by the same empire increases with the time a region was occupied. Network analysis suggests that historically more economically or strategically important regions have more similar alien floras across regions occupied by an empire. Overall, we find that European colonial history is still detectable in alien floras worldwide.

Biodiversity Macroecology and Biogeography University of Göttingen Göttingen Germany

BioInvasions Global Change Macroecology Group Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research University of Vienna Vienna Austria

Campus Institut Data Science Göttingen Germany

Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use University of Göttingen Göttingen Germany

Department of Biosciences Durham University Durham UK

Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research Biodiversity Dynamics and Conservation University of Vienna Vienna Austria

Department of Ecology Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Czech Republic

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

Ecology Department of Biology University of Konstanz Konstanz Germany

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle Jena Leipzig Leipzig Germany

Institute of Ecology and Evolution The University of Edinburgh King's Buildings Edinburgh UK

Leipzig University Leipzig Germany

Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre Frankfurt Germany

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

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Nat Ecol Evol. 2022 Nov;6(11):1597-1598. doi: 10.1038/s41559-022-01903-y. PubMed

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