Abstract
The role of competition in local adaptation and the associated traits underlying adaptation remain unclear. One reason for the lack of evidence may be that plant-plant competition is ubiquitous in natural environments; thus, local adaptation to different levels of competition is difficult to test. Comparison between urban and rural habitats is suitable for examining the evolutionary impacts of competition because these habitats share several plant species, but differ greatly in plant density and their resulting degree of competition. Here, using methods of landscape ecology, we propose a landscape evolutionary ecological approach—a simple analytical framework—to investigate how landscape changes in urban–rural gradients drive the local adaptation of competitive traits. We demonstrated adaptive divergence of competitive traits (i.e. growth habits) between urban and rural populations in two Poaceae plants (Digitaria ciliaris and Eleusine indica) and summarised the experimental procedure to examine local adaptation to different levels of competitive environments. Landscape change due to urbanisation provides an opportunity to understand the drivers and constraints of the evolution of plant competitive traits. Our analytical framework will be useful for integrating research on urban evolution conducted in different countries and regions.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code Availability
R code used in this study is available upon request from the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Misuzu Fukano, Chikara Hosoda, and Kai Uchida for helping with seed collection, Chisato Tanaka and Mitsuaki Nakajima for plant management, and Junnosuke Horita for illustration.
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This research was supported by funding received by YF (JSPS Kakenhi,18K14464) and KU (JSPS Kakenhi, 20K20002).
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YF, KU, and YT developed the ideas and prepared the figures; YF drafted and coordinated the manuscript preparation; KU conducted GIS analysis; YF, KU, and YT contributed to writing all sections and revisions.
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Fukano, Y., Uchida, K. & Tachiki, Y. Urban-rural gradients: how landscape changes drive adaptive evolution of plant competitive traits. Evol Ecol 37, 215–232 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-022-10215-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-022-10215-3