Comparing Dobermans to Chihuahuas: Great Basin plants are adapted to local conditions

Habitat Restoration With Local Seed More Likely to Succeed

Despite great efforts, native restoration in the Great Basin is very often unsuccessful, especially in warmer and drier parts of the region. The findings of this study strongly support shifting to an approach that generates and preserves diverse and wild varieties of native species, then matches them to their adapted environments, similar to long-used strategies in forest regeneration and silviculture.

The researchers found that when plants were moved beyond the environmental region where they are adapted, climate may constrain their success. For example, in a subset of 27 experiments examined, two thirds showed higher local plant survival and 90% revealed greater flowering and reproduction for local plants compared to plants sourced from a distant location.

“It’s now clear that across the Great Basin, local plants have a home turf advantage over seeds from another area, even of the same species,” notes Tom Kaye, Executive Director of the Institute for Applied Ecology, and one of the authors of the study. “Planting the right seed in the right place just makes sense, and it saves money because habitat restorations are more likely to succeed.”

Fortunately, recent research on a handful of the species most important for restoration in the Great Basin has extensively examined natural trait variation to produce maps of “seed zones” that define where it is appropriate to transfer seeds from a particular location while keeping within its adapted environment. The findings of this new and ongoing research show that such variation within species is likely the norm for the many other plant species native to the region, which number in the thousands.

In addition to having practical implications for restoration, the study is the largest yet to examine within-species variation for an entire community within a single region, uncovering which plant traits are adapting to the unique Great Basin environment, and which environmental conditions are responsible for these adaptations. An improved understanding of how and why plants evolve to their surroundings is important knowledge as environments are rapidly changing due to increased disturbance, invasive species, and a changing climate.

“We’ve known for decades that local adaptation is common in nature, and we know in theory that an understanding of local adaptation should inform how we manage and restore natural resources,” says Matt Forister, professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. “However, it takes decades of studies and ultimately a review paper of this kind to bring the issue into sufficient focus, for one particular region, so that knowledge can improve management on the ground.”

The authors of the study include researchers from the Department of Biology at the University of Nevada Reno, Institute for Applied Ecology, Washington State University, and USDA Forest Service.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Original scholarly publication: Strong patterns of intraspecific variation and local adaptation in Great Basin plants revealed through a review of 75 years of experiments

Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Boise, Idaho

Department of Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada

Institute for Applied Ecology, Corvallis, Oregon

Deschutes National Forest, USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region, Bend, Oregon

Washington State University, Pullman, Washington

Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Corvallis, Oregon