Mosaic of local adaptation between white clover and rhizobia along an urbanization gradient
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Urbanization frequently alters the biotic and abiotic environmental context. Variation in both the biotic and abiotic environment can result in selection mosaics that lead to locally adapted phenotypes. Ecological changes to urban environments can result in evolutionary responses across a diverse array of plants and animals, but the effects of urbanization on local adaptation and coevolution between species remain largely unstudied. Using a common garden experiment of 30 populations and 1080 plants, we tested for local adaptation in the mutualism between white clover ( Trifolium repens ) and rhizobia ( Rhizobium leguminosarum symbiovar trifolii ) along an urbanization gradient. We asked: (Q1) are white clover and rhizobia locally adapted? (Q2) Does nitrogen (N) addition mediate the strength of local adaptation? (Q3) Is the strength of local adaptation in host plants related to the strength of local adaptation in rhizobia, as expected if white clover and rhizobia are coadapting? And (Q4) how does the degree of local adaptation vary with urbanization? We found evidence for local adaptation for both white clover and rhizobia, with stronger signatures of local adaptation for rhizobia than white clover (Q1). While N addition positively affected plant biomass and negatively affected nodule density, N addition did not consistently mediate patterns of local adaptation (Q2). The strength of local adaptation was positively related between white clover and rhizobia under N addition, suggesting that soil N mediates coadaptation between white clover and rhizobia (Q3). We did not find a consistent relationship between measures of urbanization and local adaptation (Q4). Additionally, fitness responses for white clover and rhizobia were unrelated to Rhizobium abundance and local adaptation was unrelated to the broader bacterial microbiome in the soil inoculants or root endosphere. Synthesis . Our results show a spatial mosaic in local adaptation, with stronger local adaptation for rhizobia than white clover. While urbanization does influence the ecology of plant–microbe interactions, our study suggests urbanization does not disrupt local adaptation and coevolution among mutualists.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".