Alien Plant Impacts on European Community Thermophilization

Climate change and biological invasions are two major drivers of global biodiversity loss, altering community compositions and species distributions, with significant economic and ecological impacts. Rising temperatures increase the prevalence of warm-adapted species in ecosystems, a process termed thermophilization. However, the role of alien species in reshaping community dynamics under climate warming remains understudied. In Europe, where climate warming and alien plant spread are accelerating, addressing this knowledge gap is important for biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, and management decisions. This project aims to comprehensively analyze thermophilization in European plant communities over recent decades, with a particular focus on the roles of alien plants whether and in what ways they influence the magnitude and pace of community thermophilization. Specifically, the project will assess thermophilization patterns across major habitats (e.g., forests, grasslands, wetlands), compare the relative contributions of native and alien plants to community thermophilization, and examine key processes and mechanisms, such as species colonization and local extinction. To achieve these objectives, the project will use long-term resurvey dataset across Europe (ReSurveyEurope) integrated with multiple open European and global datasets. The project will calculate species thermal indices to quantify changes in community thermophilization rates across habitats and, together with functional trait and phylogenetic information, identify the processes and mechanisms that mainly drive thermophilization. The results of this project will help identify the regions and habitats most affected by the combined pressures of climate warming and alien plants, and will support more targeted actions in alien species management, habitat management, and adaptive conservation, thereby contributing to the protection of biodiversity and ecological security in Europe.