Abstract
Drivers of non-native plant success in drylands are poorly understood. Here we identify functional differences between dryland native and non-native perennial plants and assess how biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic factors shape the success of the latter. On the basis of plant community and functional trait data from 98 sites across 25 countries, we report a total of 41 non-native plant species at 31 sites. Non-natives tend towards faster growth strategies than natives. Non-native plant richness is higher at sites with greater grazing pressure and under environmental conditions associated with higher soil fertility, decomposition and fungal richness—conditions that tend to occur in less arid regions—and lower where native plant and herbivore richness are greater. Non-native plant cover correlates positively with grazing pressure and negatively with native plant richness. Taken together, our results suggest that non-native plant success in drylands is facilitated when high grazing pressure coincides with elevated resource availability. Such context-dependence of non-native plant success and linkages with native plant and herbivore diversity highlight the need for managing grazing and conserving biodiversity across the world’s drylands.
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Data availability
All data used in this study are available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27895713 (ref. 109).
Code availability
The R scripts used to generate the main results of this study are available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27895713 (ref. 109).
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Acknowledgements
We dedicate this article to the loving memory of coauthor A. D. Thomas, who died during the publication of this article. We appreciate all the people who conducted field measurements and contributed to the BIODESERT dataset, as well as the landowners who provided access to the sites. The BIODESERT global survey was funded by the European Research Council (ERC grant no. 647038 (BIODESERT), awarded to F.T.M.), with additional funding from Generalitat Valenciana (grant no. CIDEGENT/2018/041). S.R. acknowledges the research fellowship provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (no. 346001466). S.R., N.E. and Y.H. acknowledge support from iDiv (German Research Foundation, DFG, grant no. FZT 118, 202548816) and the DFG (grant no. Ei 862/29-1; FOR 5000, 422440326). F.T.M. acknowledges support from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the KAUST Climate and Livability Initiative. P.P. and M.H. were supported by EXPRO grant no. 19-28807X (Czech Science Foundation) and the long-term research development project with grant no. RVO 67985939 (Czech Academy of Sciences). E.B. and B.B. were supported by the Taylor Family–Asia Foundation Endowed Chair in Ecology and Conservation Biology. N.G. was supported by the AgreenSkills+ fellowship programme, funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (grant no. FP7-609398) and by the French government IDEX-ISITE initiative grant no. 16-IDEX-0001 (CAP 20-25). K.T., L.v.d.B. and R. Canessa were supported by the DFG Priority Programme SPP-1803 ‘EarthShape: Earth Surface Shaping by Biota’ (grant nos TI 338/14-1&2 and BA 3843/6-1). L.v.d.B. additionally acknowledges support from grant no. ANID PIA/ACT 210038. G.M.W. and Y.C.D. were supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project. M. Bowker was supported by the School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University. M. Berdugo was supported by a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science (grant no. RyC2021-031797-I). A.N. and M.K. were supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (https://doi.org/10.54499/CEECIND/02453/2018/CP1534/CT0001; https://doi.org/10.54499/PTDC/ASP-SIL/7743/2020; https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/00329/2020; https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0121/2020) and by a PhD fellowship (grant no. SFRH/BD/130274/2017) and acknowledge support from the LTsER Montado platform (grant no. LTER_EU_PT_001). E.H.-S. acknowledges financial support from CONAHCYT project PRONAII 319059. A.L. and L.K. are supported by the DFG through the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Future Rural Africa’ (grant nos TRR228/1-3). A.L. also acknowledges support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the NamTip pproject (grant nos 01LC1821A and 01LC2321A). C.B. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos 41971131 and U25A20826). M.F. acknowledges a grant provided by Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. H.C. acknowledges support from FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., within the framework of project with grant no. UIDB/04004/2025 (Centre for Functional Ecology–Science for the People and the Planet). E.V. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (grant nos PID2022-140398NA-I00 and CNS2024-154579). C.P. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant no. PID2020-116578RB-I00). A.F. acknowledges support from ANID PIA/BASAL FB210006 and the Millennium Science Initiative Programme (grant no. NCN2021-040). L.H.F. received funding through a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Chair in Ecosystem Reclamation. P.L. was funded by the research initiative of the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg and supported by the 111 Project (grant no. D23029). P.J.R. was supported by the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional through the FEDER Andalucía operative programme (grant no. FEDER-UJA 1261180). A.R. was supported by FCT (grant no. SFRH/BDP/108913/2015) and by the CFE research unit (grant no. UIDB/04004/2021), funded by FCT/MCTES through national funds (grant no. PIDDAC). O.V. was supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office within the framework of the National Laboratory for Health Security programme (grant no. RRF-2.3.1-21.2022-00006). L.W. acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation (grant nos EAR-1554894 and DEB-2406931). L.v.d.B. and R. Canessa thank CONAF and the Comunidad Agrícola Quebrada de Talca and R. Peters, A.L. Piña, R. Ledezma, E. Vidal and F. Perona for their assistance in the field. We thank R. Zeiss for suggestions in preparing the map and J. Wang for contributions to the bioinformatic analysis in the BIODESERT project. Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.
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Project administration: F.T.M. Conceptualization: S.R., N.E., P.P., M.H. and F.T.M. Supervision: N.E., H.F., M.H. and P.P. Field work: S.R., D.J.E., N.G., Y.L.B.-P., H.S., M.D.-B., M. Berdugo, V.O., B.G., S.A., E. Geiger, E.V., M.G.-G., J.J.G., B.M., C.P., P.D.-M., J.M.-V., M.A., N.A., R.J.A., F.A., T.A., A.I.A., F.B.S., N.B., E.B., B.B., M. Bowker, L.v.d.B., C.B., R. Canessa, A.P.C.-M., H.C., P.C.-Q., G.C., R. Chibani, A.A.C., Y.C.D., B.D., D.A.D., A.D., C.I.E., A.F., M.F., D.F., J.F., L.H.F., E. Guirado, S.L.G., E.G.M., R.H., E.M., R.M.H.H., S.D.H.-V., N.H., E.H.-S., O.J., A.J., L.K., M.K., P.C.l.R., C.V.L., X.L., P.L., A.L., J.L., M.A.L., G.M.-K., T.P.M., O.M.I., A.J.M., P.M., R.M., M.P.M., J.V.S.M., J.P.M., G.M., S.M.M., G.R.N., A.N., G.O., S.P., G.P., Y.P., E.Q., S.C.R., P.J.R., A.R., V.R., J.C.R., A. Salah, S.S., B.K.S., A. Swemmer, A.L.T., A.D.T., K.T., S.T., O.V., W.W., D.W., L.W., G.M.W., P.W., L.Y., G.R.O., R.Y., E.Z., Y.Z., X.Z. and F.T.M. Methodology: S.R., Y.H. and N.E. Investigation: S.R. Visualization: S.R. Funding acquisition: F.T.M. and N.E. Writing—original draft: S.R., N.E. and Y.H. Writing—review and editing: all authors discussed the results and contributed to editing the paper.
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Rahmanian, S., Eisenhauer, N., Huang, Y. et al. Abiotic and biotic controls of non-native perennial plant success in drylands. Nat Ecol Evol 10, 523–535 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02971-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02971-6
