| The current geographical distribution of alien species could be informative of processes involved in the biological invasions facilitated by humans. Because environmental and anthropic factors affect the geographic distribution of alien plants, we hypothesize that naturalized plants have a non-random distribution along extensive geographical ranges. On the basis of a complete and updated database of naturalized plants in Chile, we analyzed their turnover and floristic similarities among regions that encompass a wide latitudinal gradient in South America. Using Moran's index and Mantel's test we characterized the spatial auto-correlation (regional aggregation) and the effect of geographical distance on the index values. Additionally, we used clustering... |
