DOI: 10.5061/dryad.zgmsbcckb
title: Data from: Land-use intensity and relatedness to native plants promote exotic plant invasion in a tropical biodiversity hotspot

description: Exotic plant invasions threaten biodiversity and are costly to farmers.
 Land use is a major pathway promoting the spread of exotic plant species;
 however, little is known about the processes underlying the success of
 exotic plants in tropical agricultural landscapes. Focussing on the
 heterogeneous smallholder landscapes of north-eastern Madagascar, we
 studied exotic plants of understorey communities across a land-use
 intensity gradient from unburned lands (old-growth forests, forest
 fragments, and forest-derived vanilla agroforests) to burned ones
 (fallow-derived vanilla agroforests, woody fallows, and herbaceous
 fallows).  We quantified the absolute species richness,
 abundance, and cover of exotic plants across land-use types and their
 proportional contribution to community richness, abundance, and cover as
 indicators of exotic plant invasion. We tested for the effects of land-use
 parameters, namely land-use history, canopy closure, and landscape-level
 forest cover, on exotic plants. Additionally, we tested whether the
 phylogenetic relatedness between exotic and native species in the same
 plot affected invasion success, testing Darwin’s naturalization and
 pre-adaptation hypotheses.  All indicators of exotic plant
 invasion were lowest in old-growth forests and forest fragments and
 highest in fallow-derived vanilla agroforests, woody fallows, and
 herbaceous fallows. Absolute and proportional exotic richness was
 negatively affected by canopy closure, and landscapes with high forest
 cover had lower proportions of exotic plant richness. High phylogenetic
 relatedness between exotics and natives was associated with lower
 proportional richness but higher proportions of exotics in abundance and
 cover. However, individual exotic species showed contrasting responses to
 land-use parameters and relatedness to natives. Synthesis and
 applications: Our results indicate that maintaining unburned lands,
 land-use types with dense canopies, and landscapes with high forest cover
 prevents the spread of exotic plants within agricultural landscapes of
 north-eastern Madagascar. Supporting Darwin’s pre-adaptation hypothesis,
 exotic plants phylogenetically closely related to native plants are more
 likely to become successful invaders in terms of abundance and cover.
 Nevertheless, individual species show different responses to land-use
 changes and phylogenetic relatedness. Therefore, land-use decisions and
 management choices can be tailored to limit the spread of exotic species
 and to preserve native plants in this global biodiversity hotspot.
description: 1) Understorey plant communities across 70 plots with their
 species names, genus, family, and species origin (native, exotic or
 unknown origin), number of individuals and species cover per plot,
 assessed using 8 subplots of 4 m² per plot and then pooled on plot
 level. 2) Plot characteristics (plot code, land-use
 history, canopy cover, landscape-scale forest cover).
 Methods are described in the paper:
 Raveloaritiana, E., Tscharntke, T., Martin, D. A., Wurz, A.,
 Osen, K., Soazafy, M. R., Vorontsova, M. S., Kreft, H., Rakouth, B.,
 & Grass, I. (2024). Land-use intensity and relatedness to native
 plants promote exotic plant invasion in a tropical biodiversity
 hotspot.<strong> Accepted in Journal of Applied
 Ecology.</strong>
description: # Data from: Land-use intensity and relatedness to native plants promote
 exotic plant invasion in a tropical biodiversity hotspot
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zgmsbcckb](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zgmsbcckb) ## Owners: Estelle Raveloaritiana, Teja Tscharntke, Dominic A. Martin, Annemarie Wurz, Kristina Osen, Marie Rolande Soazafy, Maria S. Vorontsova, Holger Kreft, Bakolimalala Rakouth, Ingo Grass **Dryad data citation:** “Raveloaritiana, E., Tscharntke, T., Martin, D. A., Wurz, A., Osen, K., Soazafy, M. R., Vorontsova, M. S., Kreft, H., Rakouth, B., & Grass, I. (2024). Data from: Land-use intensity and relatedness to native plants promote exotic plant invasion in a tropical biodiversity hotspot. *Dryad Dataset.* [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zgmsbcckb”](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zgmsbcckb”) ## Description of the data and file structure **Dataset “1-Understorey plant communities data.csv”** contains Understorey plant communities data across 70 plots in north-eastern Madagascar with their species names, number of individuals and species cover per plot (assessed using 8 subplots of 4 m² per plot). **Dataset “2-Taxa information and geographic origin of all understorey plant species.csv”** contains taxonomic information of all species in the file *“1-Understorey plant communities data.csv”* **Dataset “3-Exotic species invasion status.csv”** contains information on the invasion status of all exotic species assessed. **Dataset “4-Plots and land-use parameters.csv”** contains land-use parameters of each plot: Plot code, village code, land-use history, names of the six land-use types, canopy closure and landscape-scale forest cover.