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. Plants with the capability to reproduce easily without mates and pollinators could have an advantage when colonizing new territory. Here, Razanajatovoet al. use a global database to infer that flowering plants capable of selfing have become naturalized in a larger number of regions than those that must outcross.
Plants capable of selfing are more likely to become naturalized
Mialy Razanajatovo,Noëlie Maurel,W. Dawson,F. Essl,H. Kreft,J. Pergl,P. Pyšek,Patrick Weigelt,M. Winter,M. van Kleunen
Published 2016 in Nature Communications
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- Publication year
2016
- Venue
Nature Communications
- Publication date
2016-10-31
- Fields of study
Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar, PubMed
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