Plants capable of selfing are more likely to become naturalized.

Mialy Razanajatovo,Noëlie Maurel,Jan Pergl,Patrick Weigelt,Petr Pyšek,Holger Kreft,Mark Van Kleunen,Franz Essl,Marten Winter,Wayne Dawson

doi:10.1038/ncomms13313

Abstract

Many plant species have established self-sustaining populations outside their natural range because of human activities. Plants with selfing ability should be more likely to establish outside their historical range because they can reproduce from a single individual when mates or pollinators are not available. Here, we compile a global breeding-system database of 1,752 angiosperm species and use phylogenetic generalized linear models and path analyses to test relationships between selfing ability, life history, native range size and global naturalization status. Selfing ability is associated with annual or biennial life history and a large native range, which both positively correlate with the probability of naturalization. Path analysis suggests that a high selfing ability directly increases the number of regions where a species is naturalized. Our results provide robust evidence across flowering plants at the global scale that high selfing ability fosters alien plant naturalization both directly and indirectly.

Highlights

Many plant species have established self-sustaining populations outside their natural range because of human activities
We combined the largest quantitative database on breeding systems of angiosperms collected to date with the most comprehensive database on alien plant species distributions (GloNAF2) to assess potential relationships between selfing ability and naturalization
The relationship between selfing ability and whether or not a species has naturalized somewhere was only indirect through a correlation with life history, and a positive relationship with native range size

Summary

Introduction

Many plant species have established self-sustaining populations outside their natural range because of human activities. Baker[12] posed that species capable of uniparental reproduction are more likely to establish after long-distance dispersal, because they can reproduce from a single individual This hypothesis, known as Baker’s Law or Baker’s Rule[13], may apply to natural long-distance dispersal events as well as to species introduced by humans to new regions, because suitable mates and/or pollinators may be scarce there[14]. Despite the extensive number of studies on the breeding systems of flowering plants around the globe, only few efforts have been made to compile the individual quantitative findings into a global database[22,25] Such an approach, covering as many regions and plant species as possible, is necessary to address general scientific questions related to plant reproductive strategies

Methods

Results

Conclusion