Plant species invasions along the latitudinal gradient in the United States: Reply

Abstract

We welcome the opportunity to respond to the comments of our colleagues, Fridley et al. (2006), on our recent paper (Stohlgren et al. 2005) regarding plant species invasions along latitudinal gradients. We agree on many aspects of this important line of research. In fact, the two major findings that they report from their analysis of floras are consistent with our main points: (1) that latitude explains very little of variation in native species richness in the conterminous United States; and (2) that native plant species richness is one of the strongest predictors of nonnative species richness. We were not surprised that our conclusions were robust to a different data set and a different data transformation.

Citation

Flather, Curtis H.; Stohlgren, Thomas J.; Jarnevich, Catherine; Barnett, David; Kartesz, John. 2006. Plant species invasions along the latitudinal gradient in the United States: Reply. Ecology. 87(12): 3213-3217.