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Record W4411867202 · doi:10.1073/pnas.2503670122

Herbarium specimens reveal a constrained seasonal climate niche despite diverged annual climates across a wildflower clade

2025· article· en· W4411867202 on OpenAlexaff
Megan Bontrager, Samantha J. Worthy, N. Ivalú Cacho, Laura Leventhal, Julin Maloof, Jennifer R. Gremer, Johanna Schmitt, Sharon Y. Strauss

Bibliographic record

VenueProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicSpecies Distribution and Climate Change
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
FundersNational Science Foundation
KeywordsEcological nicheNicheCladeHerbariumEcologyBiologyNiche segregationClimate changeRange (aeronautics)PhenologyPhylogenetic treeHabitat

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

) clade (Brassicaceae), which originated in deserts and diversified into cooler, moister areas. To understand how climate niches evolved, we used historical climate records to estimate each species' 1) classic annual climate niche, averaged over specimen collection sites; 2) growing season niche, from estimated specimen germination date to collection date, averaged across specimens (specimen-specific niche); and 3) standardized seasonal niche based on average growing seasons of all species (clade-seasonal niche). In addition to estimating how phenological variation maps onto climate niche evolution, we explored how spatial refugia shape the climate experienced by species by 1) analyzing how field soil texture changes relative to the climate space that species occupy and 2) comparing soil water holding capacity from each specimen locality to that of surrounding areas. Specimen-specific niches exhibited less clade-wide variation in climatic water deficit (CWD) than did annual or clade-seasonal niches, and specimen-specific temperature niches showed no phylogenetic signal, in contrast to annual and clade-seasonal temperature niches. Species occupying cooler regions tracked hotter and drier climates by growing later into the summer, and by inhabiting refugia on drought-prone soils. These results underscore how phenological shifts, spatial refugia, and germination timing shape "lived" climate. Despite occupying a large range of annual climates, we found these species are constrained in the conditions under which they thrive.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.006

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.026
GPT teacher head0.306
Teacher spread0.279 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations5
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences→Same topicSpecies Distribution and Climate Change→French-language works237,207→