The Global Garlic Mustard Field Survey (GGMFS): challenges and opportunities of a unique, large-scale collaboration for invasion biology

This is the publisher's version of an article published by Pensoft Publishers.To understand what makes some species successful invaders, it is critical to quantify performance differences between native and introduced regions, and among populations occupying a broad range of environmental conditions within each region. However, these data are not available even for the world’s most notorious invasive species. Here we introduce the Global Garlic Mustard Field Survey, a coordinated distributed field survey to collect performance data and germplasm from a single invasive species: garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) across its entire distribution using minimal resources. We chose this species for its ecological impacts, prominence in ecological studies of invasion success, simple life history, and several genetic and life history attributes that make it amenable to experimental study. We developed a standardised field survey protocol to estimate population size (area) and density, age structure, plant size and fecundity, as well as damage by herbivores and pathogens in each population, and to collect representative seed samples. Across four years and with contributions from 164 academic and non-academic participants from 16 countries in North America and Europe thus far, we have collected 45,788 measurements and counts of 137,811 plants from 383 populations and seeds from over 5,000 plants. All field data and seed resources will be curated for release to the scientific community. Our goal is to establish A. petiolata as a model species for plant invasion biology and to encourage large collaborative studies of other invasive species.RIC is grateful for fellowship funding from Canadian NSERC-PGS and NSERC-Banting programs, and PMK is supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant. RAH acknowledges support from the Colorado State University Agricultural Experiment Station. PP was supported by long-term research development project no. RVO 67985939 from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, institutional resources of Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, and acknowledges the support by Praemium Academiae award from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic