Abstract
<p>Plant invasion in the Northern Steppe Dnieper has a long history complicated by excessive anthropogenic transformation of territory. Alien species status, origin areas, life history, and invasive tendency of alien species in Dnipropetrovsk region were investigated. The presence of 286 alien species of 61 families was registered. Some 7 families had the greatest species diversity (156 alien species that was 55% of total species number); 30 families were represented by 2–9 alien species, and 24 families contained only 1 alien species. So, the current proportion of the alien species was almost 17% in the regional flora. Archaeophytes consist of 40% of the total alien species, while neophytes had more than 60%. The proportion of naturalized species amounted 58% from alien species, whereas the share of casual species was 42%. The greatest abundance of alien species was typical for <em>Brassicaceae</em>, <em>Asterasea</em>, and <em>Poaceae </em>(14, 13, and 9% of the total species number). We proved invasive status of 28 species and positive trend regard alien species ratio for last years. </p>
Highlights
Biological invasions were defined as a fundamental driver of ecosystem degradation (Pyśek & Richardson, 2010; Schindler et al, 2016)
We provided the first checklist of alien species founded in the regional flora and assessed the current state of the alien species invasion process
Definition of invasive status of alien species was made on the basis of the Richardson et al (2000) criterion, which involves the species classification according to its stage along the introductionnaturalization-invasion continuum (INIC)
Summary
Biological invasions were defined as a fundamental driver of ecosystem degradation (Pyśek & Richardson, 2010; Schindler et al, 2016). In Dnipropetrovsk province, located within the geographic area of Northern Steppe Dnieper, the extended anthropogenic impact resulted in overgrazing, quarrying, and pollutants action (Brygadyrenko & Reshetniak, 2014; Tsvetkova et al, 2016). In such circumstances, autochthonous flora undergoes profound destruction, rapid degradation, and loss of typical components replaced on synanthropic species, including aliens (Protopopova, 1991, 1999). European researchers (Pyśek et al, 2012) emphasize the research importance of the regional alien flora for better understanding the invasion process. We provided the first checklist of alien species founded in the regional flora and assessed the current state of the alien species invasion process
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