In the battle to survive and thrive in today’s world of unpredictable climate change, it may be that the invasive and non-native plants reign supreme.   Charles C. Davis, an assistant professor at the Harvard Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, recently published his findings from a study on how invasive plants have changed over the past 150 years.

Davis’ works thus far, including his 2008 publications, are based on the famous naturalist Henry David Thoreau’s writings concerning Walden Pond.  Thoreau kept a log of the various flora present at Walden Pond and details on the species occurrences and flowering patterns that he observed.

Davis’ team performed a comprehensive comparison between the plant species present during the time of Thoreau’s writings, approximately 1851-1858, and the species in present day.

They found that the mean annual temperature of Walden Pond (measured according to that of Concord, Massachusetts) has increased by 2.4 degrees Celsius. The team believes that this change in temperature may have been the cause for many of the plant species to time-shift their reproductive cycles to accommodate for the spring season’s earlier arrival time.

The fact that all of the plants documented at Walden Pond have adapted to the climate change is not what scientists find so astonishing.  Rather, it is the success of the invasive and non-native plants observed relative to their native counterparts that is so groundbreaking. Upon further research of the surviving plants’ traits, Davis’ crew was able to claim that “non-native and invasive species have been the climate change winners.”

The Harvard team’s research also focused on identifying common features of the more successful plant species.  In these plants, they found similarities in flowering, leaf growth, germination and migration. Davis hopes that “[his] results could help in developing predictive models to assess the threat of future invasive species, which may become greatly exacerbated in the face of continued climate change”.

Discussion question: In the past, landscapers and horticulturists have been fearful of planting invasive species because of the unpredictable growth patterns that might ensue. How does this research support or negate such fears?

News article: http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=10020421-invasive-plants-are-beneficiaries-climate-change-thoreau-woods

Journal article: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008878