Soil-mediated eco-evolutionary feedbacks in the invasive plant Alliaria petiolata.

ABSTRACT: Ecological and evolutionary processes historically have been assumed to operate on significantly different time-scales. We know now from theory and work in experimental and model systems that these processes can feed back on each other on mutually relevant time-scales.Here, we present evidence of a soil-mediated eco-evolutionary feedback on the population dynamics of an invasive biennial plant, Alliaria petiolata.As populations age, natural selection drives down production of A. petiolata's important antimycorrhizal allelochemical, sinigrin. This occurs due to density-dependent selection on sinigrin, which is favoured under interspecific, but disfavoured under intraspecific, competition.We show that population stochastic growth rates (λ_S) and plant densities are po

SUBMITTER: Evans JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6686332 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature