Adapting to beach and dune environments: A study of fitness and ecological factors in the coastal plant Cakile edentula
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Species’ geographical and ecological ranges are limited by the interaction of genotypes with the biotic and abiotic environment, and the quality of the habitat relative to the species’ niche requirements. A fundamental question in ecology and evolution is how species will respond to changes in their environment; whether species will shift their distribution to track the niche environment, locally adapt, or become extirpated. Along an ecological gradient, the factors defining a species’ limits and abundance are expected to vary. Species are defined by the interactions of genotypes with the environment, and these interactions may be constant in space with a strong genetic basis or vary plastically with the environment. This study assessed the phenotypic differences of Cakile edentula (sea rocket; Brassicaceae) plants along the beach to dune gradient within the species’ Atlantic Canadian range, and attempted to disentangle whether plants growing along this gradient plastically respond or are locally adapted to their home microenvironment (beach vs. dune) within the coastal habitat. Empirical plant surveys in wild populations, and a greenhouse and a reciprocal transplant experiment all revealed significant phenotypic differentiation between beach and dune plants. The patterns of variation for most traits observed in the wild were not reflected in the controlled environment, suggesting plasticity rather than genetically based trait variation accounts for most variation observed in the wild. However, there was evidence that some traits (stem elongation and seed set) had a genetic basis as they varied consistently between beach and dune plants in all environments. A greenhouse experiment manipulating growing density and salinity exposure provided evidence that increased growth and fitness associated with wild beach plants compared to dune plants may be attributed, at least in part, to the combined effects of plant density and sea spray. Moreover, this work supports the expectation for temporally and spatially variable environments that phenotypic variation in plants is primarily plastic, with some influence of maternal plant environment to offspring growth and fitness in the next generation. Overall, this study suggests C. edentula plants are highly plastic, and fitness variation between beach and dune plants likely indicates variation in habitat quality relative to the species’ niche.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot 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.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".