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(Invasive) Neobiota

by Katie Kung and Camille Schneiter

 

I. Overview

(Invasive) neobiota are nonhuman organisms — animals, plants, fungi, or microbiota –introduced by human activity into regions beyond their natural range. While most integrate without major ecological disruption, the descriptor “invasive” designates the subset that is considered harmful to ecosystems, economies, or human health. The use of parentheses in this lexicon attends to the conditional relationship between presumed non-nativeness and invasiveness, as well as to the conflation of biogeographical origin with ecological harm.[SAM1] 

Globally, the management and eradication of invasive and potentially invasive neobiota have become prominent concerns in biodiversity conservation and extinction prevention, mobilizing scientists, citizens, and policymakers. Although both “invasive” and “neo-” (non-native) are context-dependent and contested, the concept has been a focal point in ecological debates since the popularization of invasion science in the 1980s. In Germany, about 900 species are currently classified as neobiota; roughly 10% are considered invasive (Bundesamt für Naturschutz 2025).

II. Definitions

The term “neobiota” was coined by German ecologist Ingo Kowarik in 2002, defined as organisms introduced by human activity into areas outside their natural range, including hybrids and genetically engineered species. The Greek-derived neologism means “new living beings.” The temporal scope for “neo-” varies by region – in the Germanic context, where it was first coined, it refers to the descendants of those biota introduced after 1492, using Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas as a threshold date.

The term was widely taken up both in the Germanic context and beyond. The term “Neobiota” has risen to publicity through awareness campaigns and media outlets. It is widely used in German and English-speaking continental European science and policy circles. In Anglo-Saxon literature, the term exists but is still rare – so far. The success of the term “neobiota” is remarkable considering the long and ongoing tradition of proposing new terms for the wider phenomenon of anthropogenically introduced biota. New terms continue to be suggested for two reasons: First, to simplify the bulky and confusing terminological repertoire surrounding the concept. Second, to counter the perceived shortcomings of labels like “invasive,” “alien,” and “exotic,” which have been criticized as conceptually weak, ideologically loaded, and prone to xenophobic interpretations. Despite repeated attempts to standardise terminology, these labels are often conflated or used interchangeably in practice. Definitions vary regionally, institutionally, and historically.

Additionally, Neobiota is the title of a peer-reviewed journal on alien species and biological invasions, where Kowarik is the founding editor, underscoring the close – though not synonymous – relationship between introduction and invasiveness. While “neobiota” avoids some of the ideological baggage of older labels, “neo-” carries its own ideological assumptions, casting some species as permanently “new” and excluding them from biodiversity counts indefinitely, thereby reinforcing temporal distinctions that obscure longer histories of ecological integration.

III. Historical background

The terminology for the semantic field of non-native organisms is not just convoluted today. It has been so since soon after scientific botanists first suspected in the late 18th century that plants were not, as previously believed in this branch of science, necessarily autochthonous. Many of the early botanists studying the human impact on the distribution of plants were tied to the Germanic context. Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1821) presented one of the first empirical studies of what he called synanthropic or adventive flora ­­– introduced plant species adapted to anthropogenic environments. In 1903, another Swiss botanist Martin Rikli introduced the term “neophyte” to distinguish plants brought by human agency in historical times from archeophytes, which were relocated earlier. In 1922, yet another Swiss botanist, Albert Thellung, attempted a first and relatively successful standardisation of terminology for non-native plants, which had already become chaotic by the time. In the 20thcentury, German ecologists conceptually transferred the term to zoology by coining “neozoa” (Kinzelbach 1972) and to mycology with “neomycetes” (Kreisel & Scholler 1994). Kowarik finally applied the concept “neo-” to biology as such. “Neobiota,” finally, brought these strands together under a single term across all organism groups.

The history of the term “neobiota” extends beyond terminology into the environmental history of the biota labelled as such. As the choice of 1492 being the definitive threshold indicates, its history is deeply entwined with European colonialism. While biota had been globally relocated by humans for thousands of years, the Columbian exchange (Crosby 1972) after 1492 drastically extended the scope and pace of displacement. Colonial powers introduced familiar species to colonies, while importing colonial species to Europe as luxury resources and curiosities.

The neobiota that have lived in and adapted to ‘new’ places for up to 500 years were first systematically perceived as an ecological problem in the 1980s. The emerging field of invasion ecology, later invasion science, which traces its origins to Charles Elton’s The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants (1958), incorporated interdisciplinary expertise like risk analysis, economics, modelling, and genetics. From the start, the discipline acted from the self-perception of environmentalism and conservation. Its roots are thus clearly connected to the international environmental movement in boom since the 1970s, when extinction and biodiversity loss became a public concern. The scientific turn towards (invasive) neobiota was an attempt at identifying the causes of mass extinction. 

Yet, in many cases, the spread of (invasive) neobiota is an effect rather than a cause of anthropogenic extinctions and ecological change. Nonetheless, the framing of (invasive) neobiota as a major ecological threat shaped legal frameworks at both national and international levels. In the Germanic context, the international Bern Convention of 1979 restricted protection and conservation to native species and mandated the control or eradication of (invasive) neobiota. Finally, the (invasive) neobiota themselves have historically formed multiple relations to the native species in their new ecosystems: While repression is one of them, (invasive) neobiota also provide new habitats, sources of nutrition, and avenues for reproduction for native species. As some ecologists argue, (invasive) neobiota might therefore aid adaptation in times of rapid ecological change.

IV. Relevance to Environmental Humanities and Germanic Studies

Despite its attempt at neutrality, the term “(invasive) neobiota” operates through politically and historically contingent notions of nativeness, purity, and belonging – concepts that have carried dangerous ideological weight, especially in the Germanic context. Under the German National Socialist conservation regime, the protection of “heimische” (native) species was woven into broader ideological projects of racial and cultural purity, while species like the giant sequoia became a symbol of eugenics and a tool for right-wing nationalism. Such histories reveal how botanical classifications can serve exclusionary and even violent agendas, functioning as heuristics of xenophobia.

Humanities scholars and some ecologists have challenged the moral certainty and supposed scientific objectivity of the “(invasive) neobiota” discourse, particularly when it is sensationalised to mobilise public support. The exterminationist mindset – “shoot first, ask questions later” approach (Simberloff 2003, 88) – prioritises (invasive) neobiota as key drivers in some ecological concerns over other factors, which justifies their eradication as the obvious and urgent solution. Such logics carry disturbing echoes of past racial policies that framed elimination as a form of protection.

In environmental humanities, the concept of “(invasive) neobiota” intersects with questions of care and belonging, where care is considered necessarily selective; not everything can be cared for. Yet decisions about which species to be protected and which to be culled, made by whom, are often a result of a convergence of observable evidence and value judgment. Political, cultural, and biotic belongings remain inseparable from legacies of colonialism, nationalism, and human interests in an irreversibly, anthropogenically altered world. The descriptors of “invasive” and “neo-” subsume these organisms under a category of exclusion, flattening their relational potentials while obscuring the dominance of anthropogenic agency.

Reference Works

  • Bundesamt für Naturschutz. 2025. “Gebietsfremde und invasive Arten. Situation in Deutschland.” Accessed July 23, 2025. https://www.bfn.de/gebietsfremde-und-invasive-arten#anchor-8237.
  • Crosby, Alfred W. 1972. The Columbian Exchange. Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Greenwood Press.
  • de Candolle, Augustin P. 1821 (2004). “Elements of the Philosophy of Plants.” In Foundations of Biogeography, edited by Mark V. Lomolino, Dov F. Sax, and James H. Brown. University of Chicago Press.
  • Elton, Charles S. 1958. The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants. Methuen.
  • Kinzelbach, R. 1972. “Einschleppung und Einwanderung von Wirbellosen in Mittel- und Oberrhein.” Mainzer naturwissenschaftliches Archiv 11:109-50.
  • Kowarik, Ingo. 2002. „Biologische Invasionen in Deutschland. Zur Rolle nichteinheimischer Pflanzen.“ Neobiota 1: 5-24.
  • Kreisel, H., and M. Scholler. 1994. “Chronology of Phytoparasitic Fungi Introduced to Germany and Adjacent Countries.” Botanica Acta 107: 387-92.
  • Rikli, Martin. 1903. „Die Anthropochoren und der Formenkreis des Nasturtium palustre (Leyss.) DC.“ Berichte der Zürcherischen Botanischen Gesellschaft 13: 71–82.
  • Simberloff, Daniel. 2003. “How Much Information on Population Biology Is Needed to Manage Introduced Species?” Conservation Biology 17 (1): 83–92.
  • Thellung, Albert. 1922. „Zur Terminologie der Adventiv- und Ruderalfloristik.“ Allgemeine botanische Zeitschrift für Systematik, Floristik, Pflanzengeographie 24/25: 36–42.