Climatic niche shifts are common in introduced plants.

Atwater, Ervine, Barney (link) (pdf)

 

I am very excited to announce that our paper has just been accepted for publication by Nature: Ecology & Evolution. In it, we show that almost 1000 invasvie plant species occupy much different climates in their introduced range than in their native range.

This finding is significant for several reasons. First, it means that species do not necessarily occupy the same environments everywhere they are found on Earth. Second, it casts doubt on the viability of using information about species’ native-range habitat preferences to predict where they will invade.

However, we found that niche shifts depended upon species growth form, life expectancy, and degree of cultivation, suggesting that ‘niche shifts’ might be predictable.

Particular congratulations go to Carissa Ervine, who contributed to this manuscript as an undergraduate student. She was responsible for assembling the first version of our database of 13 million occurrence records for 1135 species–a major undertaking!