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Plants
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Climate Change and Invasive Plants
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Climate Change and Invasive Plants

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 525

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Maria Cristina Morais

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences (CITAB), University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: invasive plant species; plant physiology; plant response to environmental changes; management and control of invasive plant species; restoration of invaded communities
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Invasive alien species are among the top five drivers of global environmental disruption, with escalating impacts at ecological, economic, and human-health levels. To address this growing challenge, the European Commission adopted Regulation No. 1143/2014, emphasizing the need for targeted management measures for widespread invasive species. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 reinforces this priority, setting an ambitious goal to reduce the spread of invasive species by 50% by 2030. However, removing invasive species from non-native habitats and restoring ecosystems are essential steps for reversing biodiversity loss, but these efforts remain challenging and resource-intensive. The interaction between global change factors—such as altered temperature, precipitation patterns, and salinity-increased CO2 levels—and invasive species introduces complex, multidimensional effects on ecosystems, further complicating management strategies.

This Special Issue welcomes submissions of reviews, research articles, or short communications that explore the physiological traits and mechanisms through which global change drivers and invasive plant species interact to influence invasiveness. Contributions using modeling approaches to predict the effects of these drivers on plant invasiveness are also encouraged.

Dr. Maria Cristina Morais
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • climate change
  • plant invasion physiology
  • elevated and/or low temperature
  • salinity stress
  • water excess or deficiency
  • excess and/or lack of light
  • oxidative stress
  • elevated concentrations of atmospheric CO2
  • plant metabolites
  • modeling approaches for plant invasiveness and distribution

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 1335 KiB  
Article
Planting Patterns Affect the Differences in Growth and Its Responses to Nitrogen Forms and Levels Between Three Invasive and Their Respective Related Native Species
by Wei-Wei Feng, Kai Huang, Si-Miao Sun, Jian-Kun Sun, Ming Guan, Fa-Zhao Qi, Ming-Chao Liu, Bo Qu and Yu-Long Feng
Plants 2025, 14(12), 1768; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14121768 - 10 Jun 2025
Viewed by 336
Abstract
Global changes, such as atmospheric nitrogen deposition, can facilitate alien plant invasions, which are often attributed to the increase in soil nitrogen availability. However, few studies have considered the effects of global change-driven alterations in soil nitrogen forms, especially under conditions with interspecific [...] Read more.
Global changes, such as atmospheric nitrogen deposition, can facilitate alien plant invasions, which are often attributed to the increase in soil nitrogen availability. However, few studies have considered the effects of global change-driven alterations in soil nitrogen forms, especially under conditions with interspecific competition. In this study, we first determined the differences in growth, biomass allocation, and photosynthesis under different nitrogen forms and addition levels between three noxious invasive species (Xanthium strumarium, Ambrosia trifida, and Bidens frondosa) and their respective related natives grown with and without interspecific competition and then assessed the interspecific difference in nitrogen form preference using the 15N labeling technique. Interspecific competition significantly decreased the positive responses of growth to nitrogen addition for all three natives, while increasing the responses for all three invaders, particularly under nitrate addition. When grown in competition, all invaders showed significant growth advantages over their related natives in most cases, and responded more positively to the addition of nitrate relative to ammonium, while the natives responded more positively to ammonium addition. These findings indicate that the invaders prefer nitrate, while the natives prefer ammonium. Consistently, the growth advantages are more pronounced for the invaders under nitrate relative to ammonium addition, indicating that nitrate-rich habitats may be more vulnerable to the invaders. When grown in monoculture, however, the growth advantage of the invaders became smaller or even disappeared. Nitrogen form preference also disappeared in Siegesbeckia glabrescens (native) and Bidens frondosa (invasive). Interestingly, the native plant Xanthium sibiricum showed significantly higher total biomass than its invasive congener under ammonium addition in both mixed and monoculture conditions. Our 15N labeling experiment showed that all six species preferred nitrate over ammonium, although this was not significant for two natives (S. glabrescens and X. sibiricum), which is not completely consistent with the results from our nitrogen addition experiment. Our results indicate that global change-driven alterations in soil nitrogen forms, particularly the shift from ammonium to nitrate, may facilitate alien plant invasions. Planting patterns significantly affect the responses of invasive and native species to nitrogen forms and addition levels, with mixed-culture experiments providing better insights into the invasiveness of alien species. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Invasive Plants)
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