TY - GEN A1 - Galán Díaz, Javier A1 - Garcia de la Riva, Enrique A1 - Parker, Ingrid M. A1 - Leiva, María José A1 - Bernardo-Madrid, Rubén A1 - Vilà, Montserrat T1 - Plant Community Assembly in Invaded Recipient Californian Grasslands and Putative Donor Grasslands in Spain T2 - Diversity N2 - The introduction of exotic species to new regions offers opportunities to test fundamental questions in ecology, such as the context-dependency of community structure and assembly. Annual grasslands provide a model system of a major unidirectional introduction of plant species from Europe to North America. We compared the community structure of grasslands in two Mediterranean regions by surveying plots in Spain and in California with similar environmental and management conditions. All species found in Spanish grasslands were native to Spain, and over half of them (74 of 139 species) are known to have colonized California. In contrast, in California, over half of the species (52 of 95 species) were exotic species, all of them native to Spain. Nineteen species were found in multiple plots in both regions (i.e., shared species). The abundance of shared species in California was either similar to (13 species) or greater than (6 species) in Spain. In California, plants considered pests were more likely than non-pest species to have higher abundance. Co-occurring shared species tended to maintain their relative abundance in native and introduced communities, which indicates that pools of exotic species might assemble similarly at home and away. These findings provide interesting insights into community assembly in novel ecosystems. They also highlight an example of startling global and local floristic homogenization. KW - biogeographical comparisons KW - community similarity KW - exotic plants KW - Mediterranean grasslands KW - pests KW - plant invasions KW - species abundance Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/d12050193 SN - 1424-2818 VL - 12 IS - 5 ER -