Traits data of exotic species in four tropical botanic gardens and adjacent natural forests

The establishment of new botanic gardens in tropical regions highlights a need for weed risk assessment tools suitable for tropical ecosystems. The relevance of plant traits for invasion into tropical rainforests has not been well studied. 

Working in and around four botanic gardens in Indonesia where 600 exotic species have been planted, we estimated the effect of four plant traits and time since species were introduced on: a) naturalization probability of exotic species; b) the abundance (density) of naturalized species in adjacent native tropical rainforests; and c) the distance that naturalized exotics have spread from the botanic gardens.  

We found that specific leaf area (SLA) strongly differentiated 23 naturalized from 78 non-naturalized exotic species (randomly selected from 577 non-naturalized species) in our study. These trends may indicate that exotics with high SLA benefit from at least two factors when establishing in tropical forests: high growth rates and occupatio...