Joanna Lester reported this story on Monday, January 4, 2016 18:35:00

TIM PALMER: A new database that lists the behavioural traits of more than 1,000 plant species is helping experts better understand how to manage invasive species and how to restore ecosystems after natural disasters.



The database of plants from across the world was compiled by a group of scientists from the University of Queensland and several European institutions and their research has just been published.



Dr Roberto Salguero-Gomez from the University of Queensland told Joanna Lester that this is the first time the massive information's been compiled on a publicly accessible database.



ROBERTO SALGUERO-GOMEZ: The data does exist, but it is dispersed throughout the internet and throughout publications that sometimes are really obscure, so what we did in the study is we first have to compile a pretty sizeable database that contain all of these studies from as many journals, as many countries, as many authors and for as many species as we were able to find.



JOANNA LESTER: And this database of plant behaviour, what kind of behavioural traits doe sit tell us about the plants that you've collated?



ROBERTO SALGUERO-GOMEZ: They range from the longevity to how many times the individuals within the populations are expected to reproduce on average, what are their rates of growth, what are their rates of ageing, et cetera, et cetera.



Two other very important metrics that we also looked at are the population growth rate, which tells you whether the population is under equilibrium, it maybe becoming invasive if it grows too quickly or undergoing local extinction if the population is declining too fast.



And the other one is a degree or a measurement of resilience; that is, the ability of that particular population to overcome challenges imposed by external disturbances such as climate change.



JOANNA LESTER: So land management organisations could potentially use this information to monitor invasive plant species or possibly even prevent a situation where a plant becomes invasive because now they can more easily look up its behaviour. Is that the case?



ROBERTO SALGUERO-GOMEZ: It is absolutely the case and this is also why we're trying to work with some land managers in Queensland more closely with. The main I think premise of this framework is that knowing only two characteristics of any one plant species, we can predict with a high degree of accuracy what the population growth rate of the (inaudible) populations is going to be.



And therefore predict whether you're dealing with a potentially invasive species before you put it in place as a restoring project or perhaps more management efforts need to look after that plant species, perhaps because the population is going under already pretty fast local extinction rate.



JOANNA LESTER: And in terms of restoring areas after bushfires or other natural disasters, how could this plant database help determine what should go back into an ecosystem?



ROBERTO SALGUERO-GOMEZ: Trying to understand which species should be restored depending on what ecosystem is one of the hot questions right now in my field.



And what this framework allows is for both researchers and land management to work hand-in-hand to choose the species that should be restored to offer a higher degree of resilience before external factors like fires or like direct human impacts or floodings or hurricanes.



TIM PALMER: Dr Roberto Salguero-Gomez from the University of Queensland ending that report from Joanna Lester.