Invasive species articles from across Nature Portfolio

Human-driven declines of top predators can have cascading effects on other species. Here the authors show that the loss of wolves from a landscape has facilitated the spread of the golden jackal through Europe and model the potential future colonization of this species.

How co-invading species facilitate one another remains largely unknown. This study shows that facilitation is often asymmetric and increases when co-invading plants differ in competitiveness and their ability to shape microbial communities.

The animal welfare impacts of biological invasions is a neglected research topic. Here the authors developed a framework to assess their severity and type, and apply it to bird and ant invasions, finding some ant species to cause widespread suffering of animals.

The spread of non-native species is likely to be compounded by further climate change and land-use intensification. Here the authors assess the potential distribution of 9,701 naturalized non-native plant species at a 10 × 10-km grid resolution and project shifts under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.

In this Journal Club, Mark Anthony revisits a paper showing how an invasive plant disrupts mycorrhizal symbioses, reducing native tree seedling growth and reshaping forest communities.

Human-driven native extinctions and alien naturalizations are reshaping global tree diversity. Analysing traits and environmental niches of more than 31,000 species, we showed a global shift towards fast-growing, high-resource-use trees and that slow-growing species face a rising extinction risk, findings that have major implications for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

Defining non-native populations is essential yet challenging in freshwater systems, where policy relies on administrative borders and science on ecological units. This mismatch complicates regulation, risk assessment and biosecurity. We propose a basin-first, population-level classification that distinguishes intrabasin from interbasin nativity to better support coherent, ecologically grounded policy and management.

One of the world’s largest longitudinal studies, conducted across India, reveals that global climate change in the twenty-first century has accelerated plant invasions. Climate change and invasive plants are disrupting ecosystems, including tiger habitats, and affecting millions of people. The study maps socioecological risk hotspots to guide restoration and safeguard biodiversity and livelihoods.

Global conservation agendas now emphasize habitat connectivity, with the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calling for well-connected systems by 2030. These efforts focus strongly on connectivity benefits while dismissing costs, despite emerging evidence for potential negative effects. Further empirical assessment of the costs of connectivity, and the incorporation of these risks into connectivity decision-making, is urgently needed.