![]() The analysis did not look at when individual plant species were introduced or why. Regions that were central to trade, such as southern India for the British Empire and Indonesia for the Dutch Empire, formed clusters with considerable overlap in invasive-plant composition. This was also the case for regions once part of the Dutch Empire (former Spanish and Portuguese colonies had alien-plant compositions similar to those of the artificial empires).Ĭlimate and geography play an important part in explaining the overlap in the diversity of invasive species, modelling by Lenzner’s team found, but so does the length of time regions were occupied by an imperial power. To test the association, his team turned to the Global Naturalized Alien Flora database, which maps the distribution of nearly 14,000 invasive plant species.Īcross more than 1,100 regions, including 404 islands, the researchers found that regions once occupied by the British Empire had more similarities in their invasive flora than did ‘artificial’ empires that the team assembled from random regions. The link between European colonialism and invasive species is intuitive, and has been noted by other researchers, says Bernd Lenzner, a macro-ecologist at the University of Vienna who led the study. The longer the regions were occupied, the more their populations of invasive species resemble each other, the research found. Regions that were once occupied by the same European colonial power - such as India and Sri Lanka - tend to have similar species of non-native and invasive plants. Such botanical legacies of imperial rule are common, finds a study published on 17 October in Nature Ecology & Evolution 1. The British quinine scheme failed - instead, a species introduced to Java, now part of Indonesia, by the Dutch Empire later dominated the global market - but Cinchona trees are still common in parts of India. After cultivation in the United Kingdom, young Cinchona trees were planted across southern India and what is now Sri Lanka. The bark of these ‘fever’ trees produces the anti-malarial compound quinine, and the British Empire sought a stable source of the drug for its soldiers and civil service in India. In 1860, a British expedition raided the highland forests of South America, looking for a hot commodity: Cinchona seeds. Similar non-native and invasive flora, such as the fever tree (pictured), are found in regions previously occupied by the same European empire. ![]()
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