Florencia Yannelli

National Scientific and Technical Research Council | conicet · CCT Mendoza

In this contribution of the Hypothesis Description series, we provide an overview of one of the longest-standing hypotheses in invasion science: Darwin's naturalization hypothesis. We present a brief summary of past definitions and propose the revised definition “low phylogenetic similarity between non-native species and the recipient community inc...

Amid global environmental crises threatening the survival of many species, including our own, a diverse group of scientists from 15 countries and members of 16 professional and academic societies, concerned with the current global environmental crisis met in February 2024 to address the urgent need to reflect on, and identify, our core values and r...

Invasive alien species pose significant threats to global biodiversity and ecosystems. Given the high importance of context-dependency in invasion dynamics, testing fundamental hypotheses of invasion ecology in different environmental contexts is crucial to understand the underlying processes of the establishment and spread of alien species. This s...

Understanding why some, but not other, plant communities are vulnerable to alien invasive species is essential for predicting and managing biological invasions. Darwin proposed two seemingly contradictory hypotheses on how native‐invader relatedness influences invasion success, emphasizing, respectively, the importance of environmental filtering an...

With the exponential increase in scientific publications, new conceptual and technological tools are needed to help scientists, students, managers and policy-makers to navigate and digest current scientific knowledge. Hi Knowledge is an initiative to synthesise and visualise scientific knowledge, with an initial focus on invasion biology that is cu...

With the aim to identify future challenges and opportunities in vegetation science, we brought together a group of 22 early-career vegetation scientists from diverse backgrounds to perform a horizon scan. In this contribution, we present a selection of 15 topics that were ranked by participants as the most emergent and impactful for vegetation scie...

A challenge in many restoration projects, in particular when establishing de novo communities, is the arrival and later dominance of invasive alien plants. This could potentially be avoided by designing invasion-resistant native communities. Several studies suggest achieving this by maximizing trait similarity between natives and potential invaders...

Our ability to predict invasions has been hindered by the seemingly idiosyncratic context-dependency of individual invasions. However, we argue that robust and useful generalisations in invasion science can be made by considering “invasion syndromes” which we define as “a combination of pathways, alien species traits, and characteristics of the rec...

Le Roux et al. suggest that documented increases in local plant richness in response to climate change should consider the nature of ‘new’ species. They find that species responsible for increases in richness in areas that have experienced significant disturbance and climate change are often invasive and/or weedy species.

The Novel Weapons Hypothesis postulates that the release of allelochemicals by alien plants can inhibit the growth of evolutionary naı¨venaı¨ve native plants. On the other hand, when species share a recent evolutionary history, recognition of phytochemicals from neighboring plants can have adaptive value by providing cues to signal suitable conditi...

Background and aims: Since its emergence in the mid-20th century, invasion biol- ogy has matured into a productive research field addressing questions of fundamen- tal and applied importance. Not only has the number of empirical studies increased through time, but also has the number of competing, overlapping and, in some cases, contradictory hypot...

Ecosystem properties can be positively affected by plant functional diversity and compromised by invasive alien plants. We performed a community assembly study in mesocosms manipulating different functional diversity levels for native grassland plants (communities composed by 1, 2 or 3 functional groups) to test if functional dispersion could const...

During the Anthropocene, humans are changing the Earth system in ways that will be detectable for millennia to come [1]. Biologically, these changes include habitat destruction, biotic homogenization, increased species invasions, and accelerated extinctions [2]. Contemporary extinction rates far surpass background rates [3], but they seem remarkabl...

Although uncertainty is an integral part of any science, it raises doubts in public perception about scientific evidence, is exploited by denialists, and therefore potentially hinders the implementation of management actions. As a relatively young field of study, invasion science contains many uncertainties. This may explain why, despite internatio...

Non‐native plants often alter environments they invade, favouring their own performance through positive feedbacks. Plant–soil interactions represent one such mechanism, but their complexity (e.g. invader‐induced changes in soil nutrients, microbial communities, etc.) makes inferences of the precise mechanisms that benefit invaders difficult. Here...

Question Disturbed areas offer great opportunities for restoring native biodiversity, but they are also prone to invasion by alien plants. Following the limiting similarity hypothesis, we address the question of whether or not similarity of plant functional traits helps developing seed mixtures of native communities with high resistance to invasive...

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain biotic resistance of a recipient plant community based on reduced niche opportunities for invasive alien plant species. The limiting similarity hypothesis predicts that invasive species are less likely to establish in communities of species holding similar functional traits. Likewise, Darwin's natura...

Revegetation of roadsides is an opportunity for grassland restoration, yet these habitats are prone to be colonised by invasive alien plant species (IAS). Therefore, the selection of seed mixtures for revegetation should consider potential competition with IAS present in the soil seed bank or arriving by traffic-related seed rain. We investigated w...

Biological invasions are among the most important drivers of biodiversity loss, contributing to ecosystem degradation and complicating efforts to restore degraded ecosystems. A key question is whether or not we can prevent the establishment of invasive alien species (IAS) by designing resistant plant communities. In invasion ecology, most of the pr...

Land abandonment is a major issue worldwide. In Argentina, the Monte Desert is the most arid rangeland, where the traditional conservation practices are based on successional management of areas excluded to disturbances or abandoned. Some areas subjected to this kind of management may be too degraded, and thus require active restoration. Therefore,...

La erosión hídrica es una de las causas principales de degradación del suelo en todo el mundo y se ha convertido en un tema de preocupación social y ambiental significativo. Las tierras semiáridas con un uso histórico agrícola o pecuario intensivo y que ahora poseen un uso restringido como es el caso del Parque Nacional El Leoncito, pueden ser vuln...