Plant Invasions in a Changing Climate: Reshaping Communities, Ecosystem Functions, and Services

Climate change and biodiversity loss are among the most urgent challenges, with ecosystems rapidly responding to pressures such as rising temperatures and plant invasions. Plant community composition plays a key role in ecosystem carbon and energy flows, water balance, nutrient cycling, and pest control—directly affecting ecosystem services. We synthesize how climate change influences plant invasions across ecological scales. Climate change interacts with invasive species traits—such as high genetic and phenotypic plasticity, rapid reproduction, and generalist interactions—to facilitate invader transport, establishment, and spread, enabling them to outcompete native plants. Using field experiments, we illustrate the impacts at the community level, including effects on native plants, pollinators, seed dispersers, soil microbial communities, pests, and pathogens. Together, climate change and plant invasions destabilize ecological networks, reduce biodiversity, and trigger cascading effects on socio-ecological systems. Addressing these challenges requires inclusive, integrative approaches that prioritize emission reductions, biosecurity, conservation, and ecological restoration.