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Do invasive species show higher phenotypic plasticity than native species and, if so, is it adaptive? A meta‐analysis
Author(s) -
Davidson Amy Michelle,
Jennions Michael,
Nicotra Adrienne B.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
ecology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.852
H-Index - 265
eISSN - 1461-0248
pISSN - 1461-023X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01596.x
Subject(s) - biology , invasive species , phenotypic plasticity , ecology , introduced species , plasticity , physics , thermodynamics
Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 419–431 Abstract Do invasive plant species have greater phenotypic plasticity than non‐invasive species? And, if so, how does this affect their fitness relative to native, non‐invasive species? What role might this play in plant invasions? To answer these long‐standing questions, we conducted a meta‐analysis using data from 75 invasive/non‐invasive species pairs. Our analysis shows that invasive species demonstrate significantly higher phenotypic plasticity than non‐invasive species. To examine the adaptive benefit of this plasticity, we plotted fitness proxies against measures of plasticity in several growth, morphological and physiological traits to test whether greater plasticity is associated with an improvement in estimated fitness. Invasive species were nearly always more plastic in their response to greater resource availability than non‐invasives but this plasticity was only sometimes associated with a fitness benefit. Intriguingly, non‐invasive species maintained greater fitness homoeostasis when comparing growth between low and average resource availability. Our finding that invasive species are more plastic in a variety of traits but that non‐invasive species respond just as well, if not better, when resources are limiting, has interesting implications for predicting responses to global change.