Dispersal syndromes of alien invasive and alien noninvasive plants of the Kashmir Valley, India

摘要

Comprehensive understanding of the role of dispersal syndromes in determining species invasiveness remains elusive despite some investigations in this direction. In view of importance of the dispersal characteristics in invasion success, comparative analysis of alien invasive vs. alien non-invasive species for such traits attains key significance. Hence, we compared dispersal traits of 96 invasive alien species in the Kashmir valley, India with 72 non-invasive alien species. We specifically focused on dispersal related traits such as size, volume and number of fruits and seeds vis-a-vis duration of reproductive and dispersal phase of the species. Our results revealed that the dispersal related traits significantly influence invasion success. We conclude that invasive alien species exhibit better strategies and that related better understanding of such traits could be factored into the models predicting future plant invasions to add to their precision.