Floristic homogenization as a teleconnected trend in oceanic islands

Abstract

AbstractAim We searched for evidence of floristic homogenization in widespread oceanic archipelagos.Location Twelve oceanic archipelagos in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans: Ascension, Azores, Canary, Cape Verde, Desventuradas, Easter, Galápagos, Hawaii, Juan Fernández, Madeira, Puerto Rico and Savage.Methods By using Jaccard’s index, we established the floristic similarity between pairs of archipelagos at two stages: original (pre‐European; Jo) and current flora (Jc). Then, we calculated ΔJ = Jc–Jo, where positive differences imply that similarity has increased floristic homogenization.Results We found that floristic similarity increased fourfold on average, from 1.6% to 6.3% for original and current floras, respectively. In fact, we recorded 64 cases in which floristic similarity increased and only two in which it decreased. The importance of invasions exceeds that of extirpations as a driver of biotic change by more than an order of magnitude (2679 versus 142 species, respectively).Main conclusions The vascular floras of these 12 insular oceanic systems have increased in compositional similarity, a phenomenon consistent with the trend towards biotic homogenization. It can be characterized as a teleconnected process that operates across vast geographical distances, driven by the unprecedented capacity of humans for translocation. Trends in biotic homogenization differ depending on the geographical location (i.e. Pacific < Atlantic archipelagos) and phylogenetic groups (island vascular plants > island birds reported in a previous study), emphasizing the complexity of biotic change.