Editorial: Multiple Roles of Alien Plants in Aquatic Ecosystems: From Processes to Modelling

Invasive alien species are one of the most significant contemporary challenges threating biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human wellbeing (Rai and Singh, 2020), resulting in major economic and environmental damages and losses (Pimentel et al., 2005). Biological invasions are favored by ecosystems’ over-exploitation and climate change, and the progressive accumulation of invasive species strongly weakens the invaded communities by occupying empty phylogenetic and functional spaces or by excluding natives (Dalle Fratte et al., 2019). Among ecosystems, freshwaters seem to be particularly prone to invasions due to their high natural dynamism associated with a global hydrological and trophic alteration due to human activities (Dudgeon, 2019). This urgently calls for a better understanding of the multiple roles played by invasive aquatic alien plants (IAAPs). To this regard, the present Research Topic offers novel perspectives on IAAPs science and on the implications of their establishment.