DOI: 10.5061/dryad.c59zw3rg2
title: Invasion risk of the currently cultivated alien flora in Southern Africa is predicted to decline under climate change

description: Alien species can have massive impacts on native biodiversity, ecosystem
 functioning, and human livelihoods. Assessing which species from currently
 cultivated alien floras may escape into the wild and naturalize is
 essential for efficient and proactive ecosystem management and
 biodiversity conservation. Climate change has already promoted the
 naturalization of many alien plants in temperate regions, but whether it
 is similar in (sub)tropical areas is insufficiently known. In this study,
 we used species distribution models for 1,527 cultivated alien plants to
 evaluate current and future invasion risks across different biomes and 10
 countries in southern Africa. Our results confirm that the area of
 suitable climate is a strong predictor of naturalization success among the
 cultivated alien flora. In contrast to previous findings from temperate
 regions, however, climatic suitability is generally predicted to decrease
 for potential aliens across our (sub)tropical study region. While
 increasingly hotter and drier conditions are likely to drive declines in
 suitability for potential aliens across most biomes of southern Africa, in
 some the number of potential invaders is predicted to increase under
 moderate climate change scenarios (e.g., in dry broadleaf forests and
 flooded grasslands). We found that climatic suitability is expected to
 decline less for aliens originating from continents with the tropical
 biome or from the Southern Hemisphere. In addition, we found that the
 climatically suitable area will decline less for aliens that have already
 naturalized in the region. While the number of potential invaders may
 decrease across southern Africa under future climate change, our results
 suggest that already naturalized aliens will continue to threaten native
 species and ecosystems.
description: This readme.txt file was generated on 2024-02-12 by Ali Omer GENERAL
 INFORMATION 1. Title of Dataset: Caltivted alien flora of Southern Africa
 2. Author Information A. Principal Investigator Contact Information Name:
 Ali Omer Institution: Division of BioInvasions, Global Change &
 Macroecology, Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University
 of Vienna Address: Rennweg 14, Vienna 1030, Austria Email:
 3. Date of data collection:
 2019.03.01-2020.11.01. 4. Geographic location of data collection:
 Konstanz, Germany. 5. Information about funding sources that supported the
 collection of the data: this data was funded through the German Research
 Foundation DFG (grants 264740629 and 432253815). and FWF-DFG for funding
 (grant I-5825 – B) SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION 1. Links to publications
 that cite or use the data: This data was used to produce a study that is
 accepted for publication in Ecography (10.1111/ecog.07010). 2. Recommended
 citation for this dataset: Omer, A. et al. 2024. Invasion risk of the
 currently cultivated alien flora in Southern Africa is predicted to
 decline under climate change. – Dryad Digital Repository,
 . DATA & FILE OVERVIEW
 1. File List: * Cultivated_alien_taxa_data, list of cultivated alien taxa
 of Southern Africa and associated data on geographic origins, growth form,
 climatic suitability and naturalization status, METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION
 1. Description of methods used for collection/generation of data: The list
 of cultivated species and all the associated datasets were extracted from
 different data sources (for more details see
 ) 2. Methods for processing the
 data: Theis data has been processed with speceis distributiom models
 (SDMs), series randomization tests and generalized linear models to
 produce a manuscript accepted for publication in Ecography. DATA-SPECIFIC
 INFORMATION FOR: [Cultivated alien taxa data] 1. Number of variables: 25
 2. Number of cases/rows: 1,527 3. Variable List: * TPL names, Accepted
 taxonomic name according to The Plant List version 1.1
 () * Family, Accepted family names of
 the cultivated flora according to The Plant List version 1.1
 (). * GloNAF naturalization status,
 Naturalization status in Southern Africa (yes=1, no=0) according to the
 GloNAF database, 0-1 * Variables from 4 to 18 are names of the continents
 of origins and the growth forms of each species * Current climatic
 suitability, number of suitabile grid cells under current climatic
 condition * SSP1_CanESM5 climatic suitability, SSP5_CanESM5 climatic
 suitability, SSP1_CNRM_ESN climatic suitability, SP5_CNRM_ESN climatic
 suitability, SSP1_MIROC6 climatic suitability, SSP5_MIROC6 climatic
 suitability, number of suitabile grid cells under different future
 climatic scenarios and global circulation models (GCMs) 1. Missing data
 codes: NA \ 0 = No 1 = yes