Earlier phenology of a nonnative plant increases impacts on native competitors.

ABSTRACT: Adaptation to climate is expected to increase the performance of invasive species and their community-level impacts. However, while the fitness gains from adaptation should, in general, promote invader competitive ability, empirical demonstrations of this prediction are scarce. Furthermore, climate adaptation, in the form of altered timing of life cycle transitions, should affect the phenological overlap between nonnative and native competitors, with potentially large, but poorly tested, impacts on native species persistence. We evaluated these predictions by growing native California grassland plants in competition with nonnative Lactuca serriola, a species that flowers earlier in parts of its nonnative range that are drier than its putative European source region. In common garden

SUBMITTER: Alexander JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6442642 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature