Integrating trait‐ and niche‐based approaches to assess contemporary evolution in alien plant species
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary Two primary lines of indirect evidence for contemporary evolution in alien species are based on differences between native and introduced ranges in one or more functional traits or a shift in environmental niche. Although the integration of trait and environmental niche perspectives is increasingly recognised as a key to understanding the role of life‐history evolution in range‐shifting populations, there has been no attempt to bring together these perspectives on the contemporary evolution of alien plant species. We develop a set of scenarios that contrast trait–environment relationships observed in the field for alien species in the native and introduced range, and explore how they might be shaped by contemporary evolution. In each case, the limitations of uniquely trait or environmental niche perspectives are highlighted. The scenarios are examined in relation to long‐term trends in covariation between temperature and first flowering date of European plant species introduced into the USA . Support for four of the scenarios is found. Field studies examining how species traits respond to environmental variation along natural gradients cannot by themselves distinguish relationships arising from genetic variation, phenotypic plasticity or genetic variation for such plasticity. This is best assessed by reciprocal transplant experiments. However, trait–environment relationships provide a basis for better targeted common garden studies that are more hypothesis driven and that pinpoint the traits of interest, ascertain the appropriate selection gradients and the range over which they need to be observed, as well as identify candidate species for further study. Synthesis . The need to improve species distribution models through a better understanding of underlying ecological and evolutionary processes makes assessments of trait–environment relationships, in both the native and introduced ranges, significant. They are of paramount importance when explaining the differential success of alien plants in novel environments as well as when predicting the potential for future range shifts following introduction. The current paucity of such comparisons represents a significant gap in our understanding of biological invasions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".