Impact of invasive plants on the species richness, diversity and composition of invaded communities

Summary Much attention has been paid to negative effects of alien species on resident communities but studies that quantify community‐level effects of a number of invasive plants are scarce. We address this issue by assessing the impact of 13 species invasive in the Czech Republic on a wide range of plant communities. Vegetation in invaded and uninvaded plots with similar site conditions was sampled. All species of vascular plants were recorded, their covers were estimated and used as importance values for calculating the Shannon diversity index H′ , evenness J and Sørensen index of similarity between invaded and uninvaded vegetation. With the exception of two invasive species, species richness, diversity and…