Journal for the Education of the Gifted

Cunningham, Lindy G.

doi:10.4219/jeg-2007-268

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…To tackle this issue, it is imperative to consider how populations are usually defined in ecology: Odum (2000) defines populations as "a group of individuals of the same species that live together in a determined area". The concept of a "collection of individuals of a species in a defined area" is also adopted by Mills (2012) and Smith & Smith (2017), while other authors further refine the definition with the explicit addition of common time (Cunningham et al 2007), interactions (Cain et al 2017) and dynamics (Berryman 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tackling local ecological homogeneity: managing divergences in local populations of Mediterranean plants

Iozia

Varone

2023

Preprint

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Local homogeneity is a common assumption in ecology, which can lead to the aggregation of populations without regard for their unique needs and characteristics. Here we discuss whether this assumption is justified, and we hypothesize an approach to formulate an informed decision, by discerning the source of variation between plasticity and adaptation. We test this approach on plants, performing a common garden experiment to guide our choice discerning between the two at a local scale (~60 Km). Using functional trait measurements for three species, Quercus ilex, Pistacia lentiscus and Cistus salviifolius, hailing from three sites chosen along a local aridity gradient, we were able to reject the local homogeneity assumption for Q. ilex and C. salviifolius at this scale due to the adaptive divergence observed among neighbouring populations. We conclude that gathering empirical evidence can provide with solid bases to decide whether to adopt the local homogeneity assumption.

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