Abstract booklet - gtö – Society for Tropical Ecology

178 SCIENTIFIC POSTER SESSION | FOYERSCIENTIFIC POSTER SESSION | FOYER179Free contribution – invasive speciesFree contributionAN OVERVIEW OF INVASIVE ALIEN WEEDS IN INDIATHE GEOGRAPHY OF SPECIMEN SAMPLING: A CASE STUDY ONAFRICAN SPHINGID MOTHSDaizy Rani Batish 1Liliana Ballesteros-Mejia 1 , Ian J. Kitching 2 , Jan Beck 1WEDNESDAY | FOYER1Panjab University, Chandigarh, IL, IN, daizybatish@yahoo.comInvasive alien plants pose a major threat to biodiversity andhave homogenized the world flora. They change structure andcomposition of native ecosystems and cause economic loss. Uponentering (accidentally or purposefully), these species spread rapidlyand form their own colonies at the cost of native species. Theirspread in the alien ecosystems could be attributed to a set of traitssuch as fast growth rate, reproductive and regenerative potentialand adaptability. In India, several invasive plants viz. Partheniumhysterophorus, Lantana camara and Ageratum conyzoides, Leucaenaleucocephala, Propsopis juliflora and Broussonetia papyrifera havemade their abode. Their spread in the region has caused a numberof environmental and economic implications for the local people.These can be seen growing luxuriantly in a variety of habitats likevacant areas, pastures, forests and forest edges and cultivated areas.A number of invasive weeds are reported from India. Partheniumhysterophorus, Ageratum conyzoides, Eupatorium odoratum, Lantanacamara and Mikania micarantha are highly invasive and causeseveral problems in the invaded area including health hazards tohuman beings and livestock. There are many others which are rapidlyspreading and establishing in different habitats. It is proposed todiscuss the status of invasive plants in India with special referenceto their origin, ecological harms and possible management options.1University of Basel, Department of Environmental Science (BiogeographySection), Basel, Switzerland; Email to jan.beck@unibas.ch; 2 The Natural HistoryMuseum, Department of EntomologyPresenter: Jan BeckAbstract: Most biodiversity studies rely on specimen records, but “presenceonly”distribution data typically represents an idiosyncratic compilation ofrecords. There are geographic biases in such data that may affect subsequentanalyses. We aim to understand the factors determining the spatial distributionof the collection of species distribution data. We used a database ondistributional records of African sphingid moths to quantify record availability.We fitted multivariate models to test which features affected the geography ofsampling. Observed species richness in grid cells was strongly related to recordnumbers. Model results suggested that accessibility, tourism and populationdensity were important predictors of record numbers. In contrast, we couldnot find strong effects due to the prevalence of violent conflicts, the presenceof pristine nature, the protected status of regions, or the colonial history ofregions. Our approach allowed understanding the main geographic biases inspecimen sampling effort, and it can provide an a priori estimate of how wellsampledareas are.Wednesday WEDNESDAY 16:00 | FOYER | FoyergtöSociety for Tropical Ecology | Gesellschaft für Tropenökologie e.V. Status and future of tropical biodiversity | Frankfurt, 21 - 24 February 2011gtö