Asymmetric competition impacts evolutionary rescue in a changing environment.

Interspecific competition can strongly influence the evolutionary response of a species to a changing environment, impacting the chance that the species survives or goes extinct. Previous work has shown that when two species compete for a temporally shifting resource distribution, the species lagging behind the resource peak is the first to go extinct due to competitive exclusion. However, this work assumed symmetrically distributed resources and competition. Asymmetries can generate differences between species in population sizes, genetic variation and trait means. We show that asymmetric resource availability or competition can facilitate coexistence and even occasionally cause the leading species to go extinct first. Surprisingly, we also find cases where traits evolve in the opposite direction to the changing environment because of a 'vacuum of competitive release' created when the lagging species declines in number. Thus, the species exhibiting the slowest rate of trait evolution is not always the most likely to go extinct in a changing environment. Our results demonstrate that the extent to which species appear to be tracking environmental change and the extent to which they are preadapted to that change may not necessarily determine which species will be the winners and which will be the losers in a rapidly changing world.

Adaptation to elevated CO2 in different biodiversity contexts.

In the absence of migration, species persistence depends on adaption to a changing environment, but whether and how adaptation to global change is altered by community diversity is not understood. Community diversity may prevent, enhance or alter how species adapt to changing conditions by influencing population sizes, genetic diversity and/or the fitness landscape experienced by focal species. We tested the impact of community diversity on adaptation by performing a reciprocal transplant experiment on grasses that evolved for 14 years under ambient and elevated CO2, in communities of low or high species richness. Using biomass as a fitness proxy, we find evidence for local adaptation to elevated CO2, but only for plants assayed in a community of similar diversity to the one experienced during the period of selection. Our results indicate that the biological community shapes the very nature of the fitness landscape within which species evolve in response to elevated CO2.

Uncertainty in invasive alien species listing.

Lists of invasive alien species (IAS) are essential for preventing, controlling, and reporting on the state of biological invasions. However, these lists suffer from a range of errors, with serious consequences for their use in science, policy, and management. Here we (1) collated and classified errors in IAS listing using a taxonomy of uncertainty; and (2) estimated the size of these errors using data from a completed listing exercise, with the purpose of better understanding, communicating, and dealing with them. Ten errors were identified. Most result from a lack of knowledge or measurement error (epistemic uncertainty), although two were a result of context dependence and vagueness (linguistic uncertainty). Estimates of the size of the effects of these errors were substantial in a number of cases and unknown in others. Most errors, and those with the largest estimated effect, result in underestimates of IAS numbers. However, there are a number of errors where the size and direction of the effect remains poorly understood. The effect of differences in opinion between specialists is potentially large, particularly for data-poor taxa and regions, and does not have a clearly directional or consistent effect on the size and composition of IAS lists. Five tactics emerged as important for reducing uncertainty in IAS lists, and while uncertainty will never be removed entirely, these approaches will significantly improve the transparency, repeatability, and comparability of IAS lists. Understanding the errors and uncertainties that occur during the process of listing invasive species, as well as the potential size and nature of their effects on IAS lists, is key to improving the value of these lists for governments, management agencies, and conservationists. Such understanding is increasingly important given positive trends in biological invasion and the associated risks to biodiversity and biosecurity.