Invasive Plants

Dear Colleagues,

Invasive plants can now be found all over the world. In some areas, the presence of these species has led to striking changes; in other cases, they have become inconspicuous parts of the vegetation. Sometimes, they have effects that are clearly negative from a nature conservation point of view, and in some areas, they cause severe economic costs or human health problems. These impacts make biological invasions an important topic urgently calling for research on its applied aspects. Topics of high priority in this respect are related to finding more efficient ways for the prevention of new invasions and management of already established species.

Apart from this, invasive plants are highly interesting for basic research. During an invasion, plants get transported from their native range into a novel area. The environmental conditions in this novel area may differ considerably from those that these plants have evolved with. This leads to invasive plants usually being confronted with a whole range of abiotic and biotic conditions they are not adapted to. In this respect, plant invasions are natural experiments, offering the opportunity to study the effects of such ‘ecological novelty’ on ecological and evolutionary processes. Invasions can therefore be viewed as blueprints, also for how our native plants may respond to changing environmental conditions in the future.

For this Special Issue, we invite manuscripts (original research papers, perspectives, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, modeling approaches, and method papers) covering the whole breadth of research topics related to invasive plants.

Dr. Tina Heger
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.