Successful restoration of habitats relies on the sourcing of seed appropriate to the restoration environment. The use of non-adapted genotypes can compromise the long-term success of restoration programmes if fitness of...
The environment can vary at small spatial scales, so small that neighbouring plants in a natural population can grow with different resource levels and experience different degrees of competition. This fine-grained...
How do plants react when circumstances change? One method can be to evolve a local adaptation. Another can be be phenotypic plasticity, changing the shape of the plant to tackle a local problem. Silvia Matesanz and...
Local adaptation is common but not universal in plants and results from the interplay of gene flow with natural selection. Gene flow can increase local genetic variation and population size, which boost a species’...
Broadly distributed species encompass populations spread across habitats that vary in their climatic, edaphic and biotic environmental characteristics. The success of broadly distributed species across a wide range of...
In rosette-forming plants, rosette leaves locate near the ground, and their upper surfaces are exposed, whereas the opposite surfaces are more exposed for leaves on flowering stems.
The results showed moderate thermal acclimation of respiration and no evidence for thermal acclimation of photosynthesis or local genetic adaptation for traits related to thermal acclimation.
Reciprocal sowing experiments along environmental gradients allow evaluating local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity as in situ mechanisms to cope with climate change. Sánchez et al. used this approach to infer the...
Speciation is often described as a continuum, from minor divergence of populations to complete reproductive isolation between species. Within-species population divergence can shed light on the first steps of speciation...
The contribution of variation in seed bank dynamics to local adaptation is not well studied. Postma et al. investigated the extent to which genetic and environmental factors affect dormancy cycling and mortality of...
Plants in arid environments often have predictably different phenotypes than those in moist environments. Within species, such trait–environment associations could indicate local adaptation, yet supporting evidence is...