Callaway, R. M. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2023

Clinal variation in drought response is consistent across life stages but not between native and non-native ranges

Clinal variation, i.e., intraspecific variation that corresponds to environmental gradients, is common in widely distributed species. Studies on clinal variation across multiple ranges and life stages are lacking, but can enhance our understanding of specie[s] adaptive potential to abiotic environments and may aid in predicting future species distributions. This study examined clinal variation in drought responses of 59 Conyza canadensis populations across large aridity gradients from the native and non-native ranges in three greenhouse studies. Experimental drought was applied to recruitment, juveniles, and adult stages. Drought reduced growth at all three life stages. However, contrasting patterns of clinal variation emerged between the two ranges. Native populations from xeric habitats were less inhibited by drought than mesic populations, but such clinal variation was not apparent for non-native populations. These range-specific patterns of clinal variation were consistent across the life stages. The experiments suggest that invaders may succeed without complete local adaptation to their new abiotic environments, and that long-established invaders may still be evolving to the abiotic environment. These findings may explain lag times in some invasions and raise concern about future expansions.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2022

Assessing the accuracy of paired and random sampling for quantifying plant-plant interactions in natural communities

Interactions among plant species in extreme ecological systems are often inferred from spatial associations and quantified by means of paired sampling. Yet, this method might be confounded by habitat-sharing effects, in particular when microenvironmental heterogeneity and stress are high. Here, we address whether paired and random sampling methods provide similar results at varying levels of environmental heterogeneity. Furthermore, we investigate how the relationship between species preferences and abiotic severity influences the outcome of these two methods. We quantified spatial associations with the two methods at three sites that encompass different micro-environmental heterogeneity and stress levels: semi-arid environments in Canary Islands, Spain and Sardinia, Italy and a cold alpine environment in Hokkaido (Japan). Then, we simulated plant communities with different levels of species micro-habitat preferences, environmental heterogeneity and stress levels. We found that differences in species associations between paired and random sampling were indistinguishable from zero in our model simulations. At each site, there were strong differences between beneficiary species in their spatial association with benefactor species, and associations became more positive with increasing stress in Spain. Most importantly, there were no differences in the results yielded by the two methods at any of the different stress levels at the Spanish and Japanese sites. At the Italian site, although micro-environmental heterogeneity was low, we found weakly significant differences between methods that were unlikely due to habitat-sharing effects. We conclude that the paired sampling method can provide significant insights into net, long-term effects of plant interactions in spatially conspicuous environments.

ecology↗