Human activities are causing global biotic redistribution, translocating species and providing them with opportunities to establish populations beyond their native ranges. Species originating from certain global regions, however, are disproportionately represented among naturalized aliens. The evolutionary imbalance hypothesis posits that differences in absolute fitness among biogeographic divisions determine outcomes when biotas mix. Here, we compile data from native and alien distributions for nearly the entire global seed plant flora and find that biogeographic conditions predicted to drive evolutionary imbalance act alongside climate and anthropogenic factors to shape flows of successful aliens among regional biotas. Successful aliens tend to originate from large, biodiverse regions that support abundant populations and where species evolve against a diverse backdrop of competitors and enemies. We also reveal that these same native distribution characteristics are shared among the plants that humans select for cultivation and economic use. In addition to influencing species' innate potentials as invaders, we therefore suggest that evolutionary imbalance shapes plants' relationships with humans, impacting which species are translocated beyond their native distributions.

Biodiversity Macroecology and Biogeography University of Goettingen Göttingen Germany

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

Botanical Museum Finnish Museum of Natural History University of Helsinki Helsinki Finland

Centre for Organismal Studies Heidelberg Biodiversity and Plant Systematics Heidelberg University Heidelberg Germany

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

Department of Biosciences Durham University Durham UK

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

Department of Natural History NTNU University Museum Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim Norway

Ecology Department of Biology University of Konstanz Konstanz Germany

Icelandic Institute of Natural History Borgir vid Nordurslod Akureyri Iceland

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

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

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Many plants naturalized as aliens abroad have also become more common within their native regions

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figshare
10.6084/m9.figshare.21512145