When plants establish outside their native range, their ability to adapt to the new environment is influenced by both demography and dispersal. However, the relative importance of these two factors is poorly understood. To quantify the influence of demography and dispersal on patterns of genetic diversity underlying adaptation, we used data from a globally distributed demographic research network comprising 35 native and 18 nonnative populations of Plantago lanceolata. Species-specific simulation experiments showed that dispersal would dilute demographic influences on genetic diversity at local scales. Populations in the native European range had strong spatial genetic structure associated with geographic distance and precipitation seasonality. In contrast, nonnative populations had weaker spatial genetic structure that was not associated with environmental gradients but with higher within-population genetic diversity. Our findings show that dispersal caused by repeated, long-distance, human-mediated introductions has allowed invasive plant populations to overcome environmental constraints on genetic diversity, even without strong demographic changes. The impact of invasive plants may, therefore, increase with repeated introductions, highlighting the need to constrain future introductions of species even if they already exist in an area.
Abstract1. Species composition is a vital attribute of any ecosystem. Accordingly, ecological restoration often has the original, or "natural," species composition as its target.However, we still lack adequate methods for predicting the expected time to compositional recovery in restoration studies.2. We describe and explore a new, ordination regression-based approach (ORBA) for predicting time to recovery that allows both linear and asymptotic (logarithmic) relationships of compositional change with time. The approach uses distances between restored plots and reference plots along the successional gradient, represented by a vector in ordination space, to predict time to recovery. Thus, the approach rests on three requirements: (a) the general form of the relationship between compositional change and time must be known; (b) a sufficiently strong successional gradient must be present and adequately represented in a species compositional dataset; and (c) a restoration target must be specified. We tested the approach using data from a boreal old-growth forest that was followed for 18 years after experimental disturbance. Data from the first 9 years after disturbance were used to develop models, the subsequent 9 years for validation.3. Rates of compositional recovery in the example dataset followed the general pattern of decrease with time since disturbance. Accordingly, linear models were too optimistic about the time to recovery, whereas the asymptotic models provided more precise predictions.
Synthesis and applications.Our results demonstrate that the new approach opens for reliable prediction of recovery rates and time to recovery using species compositional data. Moreover, it allows us to assess whether recovery proceeds in the desired direction and to quantitatively compare restoration speed, and hence effectiveness, between alternative management options.
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