Extreme weather may encourage invasion of alien species: study

BEIJING -- Scientists have revealed that native animals are more sensitive to extreme weather events compared to non-native animals worldwide, according to a recent paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The findings indicated that extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, storms, heatwaves and cold waves, may encourage the invasion of alien species. As a result, such events, along with the invasive species, pose major threats to global biodiversity, the paper said.

Researchers from the Institute of Zoology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and others built a dataset comprising 187 non-native animal species and 1,852 native animal species across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems and analyzed their responses to different types of extreme weather events.

The team found that compared to the non-native ones, the native animals showed more negative responses to extreme weather events on the whole, although these responses varied across weather events and habitat types.

According to the paper, all marine animal species included in the dataset are overall insensitive to extreme weather events, except for the negative effects of heatwaves on native mollusks, corals and anemones.

Native animal species are adversely affected by heatwaves, cold waves and droughts in terrestrial ecosystems and are vulnerable to most extreme weather events except cold waves in freshwater ecosystems, whereas non-native terrestrial and freshwater animals only negatively respond to heat waves and storms, respectively, the paper said.