Do invasive species show higher phenotypic plasticity than native species and, if so, is it adaptive? A meta-analysis.
نویسندگان
چکیده
Do invasive plant species have greater phenotypic plasticity than non-invasive species? And, if so, how does this affect their fitness relative to native, non-invasive species? What role might this play in plant invasions? To answer these long-standing questions, we conducted a meta-analysis using data from 75 invasive/non-invasive species pairs. Our analysis shows that invasive species demonstrate significantly higher phenotypic plasticity than non-invasive species. To examine the adaptive benefit of this plasticity, we plotted fitness proxies against measures of plasticity in several growth, morphological and physiological traits to test whether greater plasticity is associated with an improvement in estimated fitness. Invasive species were nearly always more plastic in their response to greater resource availability than non-invasives but this plasticity was only sometimes associated with a fitness benefit. Intriguingly, non-invasive species maintained greater fitness homoeostasis when comparing growth between low and average resource availability. Our finding that invasive species are more plastic in a variety of traits but that non-invasive species respond just as well, if not better, when resources are limiting, has interesting implications for predicting responses to global change.
منابع مشابه
A Test for Pre-Adapted Phenotypic Plasticity in the Invasive Tree Acer negundo L.
Phenotypic plasticity is a key mechanism associated with the spread of exotic plants and previous studies have found that invasive species are generally more plastic than co-occurring species. Comparatively, the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in plant invasion has received less attention, and in particular, the genetic basis of plasticity is largely unexamined. Native from North America, Ac...
متن کاملJack-of-all-trades: phenotypic plasticity facilitates the invasion of an alien slug species.
Invasive alien species might benefit from phenotypic plasticity by being able to (i) maintain fitness in stressful environments ('robust'), (ii) increase fitness in favourable environments ('opportunistic'), or (iii) combine both abilities ('robust and opportunistic'). Here, we applied this framework, for the first time, to an animal, the invasive slug, Arion lusitanicus, and tested (i) whether...
متن کاملPhenotypic Plasticity of the Introduced New Zealand Mud Snail, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, Compared to Sympatric Native Snails
Phenotypic plasticity is likely to be important in determining the invasive potential of a species, especially if invasive species show greater plasticity or tolerance compared to sympatric native species. Here in two separate experiments we compare reaction norms in response to two environmental variables of two clones of the New Zealand mud snail, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, isolated from the U...
متن کاملConspecific Plasticity and Invasion: Invasive Populations of Chinese Tallow (Triadica sebifera) Have Performance Advantage over Native Populations Only in Low Soil Salinity
Global climate change may increase biological invasions in part because invasive species may have greater phenotypic plasticity than native species. This may be especially important for abiotic stresses such as salt inundation related to increased hurricane activity or sea level rise. If invasive species indeed have greater plasticity, this may reflect genetic differences between populations in...
متن کاملPreadapted for invasiveness : do species traits or their plastic response to shading differ between invasive and non - invasive plant species in their native range ?
Aim Species capable of vigorous growth under a wide range of environmental conditions should have a higher chance of becoming invasive after introduction into new regions. High performance across environments can be achieved either by constitutively expressed traits that allow for high resource uptake under different environmental conditions or by adaptive plasticity of traits. Here we test whe...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید
ثبت ناماگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید
ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Ecology letters
دوره 14 4 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2011