Many terrestrial ecosystems are co-invaded by multiple exotic species. The "invasional meltdown" hypothesis predicts that an initial invasive species will facilitate secondary invasions. In the plant kingdom, the potential underlying mechanisms of this hypothesis may be that modification of the soil properties by the initial invaders benefits for the subsequent exotic species invasion. In this study, we analyzed the composition of soil microbial communities and soil chemical properties from sites invaded by woody Rhus typhina, as well as uninvaded sites, to assess the impact of R. typhina invasion. Furthermore, we conducted a greenhouse experiment with multiple native-invasive pairs of herbaceous species to test whether R. typhina invasion facilitates subsequent exotic herb invasion. Our results showed that R. typhina invasion significantly altered the composition of soil fungal communities, especially pathogenic, endophytic, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. However, this change in microbial composition led to neither direction nor magnitude changes in negative plant-soil feedback effects on both native and invasive species. This indicates that initial R. typhina invasion does not facilitate subsequent herb invasion, which does not support the "invasional meltdown" hypothesis. Additionally, R. typhina invasion significantly decreased soil total nitrogen and organic carbon contents, which may explain the significantly lower biomass of herbaceous roots grown in invaded soils compared with uninvaded soils. Alternately, although invasive herb growth was significantly more inhibited by soil microbiota compared with native herb growth, such inhibition cannot completely eliminate the risk of exotic herb invasion because of their innate growth advantages. Therefore, microbial biocontrol agents for plant invasion management should be combined with another approach to suppress the innate growth advantages of exotic species.

Many studies show that increase in ground‐level ozone (O3) has adverse effects on plant growth. Due to high phenotypic plasticity, invasive species is considered to be more adaptable to elevated O3 than native species. This idea is only tested by the very limited studies comparing invasive weeds with crops. However, whether it holds remains unclear when comparing invasive species with their co‐occurring native species in natural systems.

Self-fertilization inherently restricts gene flow by reducing the fraction of offspring that can be produced by inter-population matings. Therefore, mating system transitions from outcrossing to selfing could result in reproductive isolation between selfing and outcrossing lineages and provide a starting point for speciation. In newly diverged lineages, for example after a transition to selfing, further reproductive isolation can be caused by a variety of prezygotic and post-zygotic mechanisms that operate before, during and after pollination. In animals, prezygotic barriers tend to evolve faster than post-zygotic ones. This is not necessarily the case for plants, for which the relative importance of post-mating, post-fertilization and early-acting post-zygotic barriers has been investigated far less. To test whether post-pollination isolation exists between populations of North American Arabidopsis lyrata that differ in breeding (self-incompatible versus self-compatible) and mating system (outcrossing versus selfing), we compared patterns of seed set after crosses made within populations, between populations of the same mating system and between populations with different mating systems. We found no evidence for post-pollination isolation between plants from selfing populations (self-compatible, low outcrossing rates) and outcrossing populations (self-incompatible, high outcrossing rates) via either prezygotic or early-acting post-zygotic mechanisms. Together with the results of other studies indicating the absence of reproductive barriers acting before and during pollination, we conclude that the transition to selfing in this study system has not led to the formation of reproductive barriers between selfing and outcrossing populations of North American A. lyrata.

About half of all angiosperms have some form of molecular self-incompatibility to promote outcrossing. If self-incompatibility breaks down, inbreeding depression (δ) is the main barrier to the evolution of self-fertilisation (selfing). If inbreeding depression is lower than 50% (δ < 0.5), the inherent transmission advantage of selfers should theoretically drive the evolution of selfing. However, this does not always happen in practice. For example, despite frequent breakdowns of self-incompatibility in North American Arabidopsis lyrata, selfing has only evolved in few populations. This is surprising given that previous inbreeding-depression estimates were well below the 0.5 threshold. Here, we test whether this could be due to underestimation of true inbreeding depression in competition-free environments. Specifically, we tested whether direct competition between crossed and selfed siblings magnified inbreeding-depression estimates in A. lyrata. We found that this was neither the case for belowground nor for aboveground biomass. For reproductive traits, there was hardly any significant inbreeding depression regardless of competition. Combined with previous findings that drought stress and inducing defence also did not magnify inbreeding depression, our results suggest that the relatively low estimates of inbreeding depression for biomass are indeed realistic estimates of the true inbreeding depression in North American A. lyrata.

As the first step towards the evolution of selfing from obligate outcrossing, identifying the key mutations underlying the loss of self-incompatibility is of particular interest. However, our current knowledge is primarily based on sequence-based comparisons between selfing species and their self-incompatible relatives, which makes it hard to distinguish causal from secondary mutations. To by-pass this problem, we inferred the genetic basis of the loss of self-incompatibility by intercrossing plants from twelve geographically interspersed outcrossing and selfing populations of North-American Arabidopsis lyrata and determining the breeding system of 1,580 progeny. Self-incompatibility was not restored after crosses between different self-compatible populations. Equal frequencies of self-compatible and self-incompatible progeny emerged from crosses between parents with different breeding systems. We propose a two-locus genetic model for the loss of self-incompatibility in which specific S- locus haplotypes ( S1 and S19 ) are associated with loss of self-incompatibility through their interaction with an unlinked modifier.

采用石蜡切片和光学显微技术,对吉林省阴生和阳生2种不同生态环境生长的胡桃楸叶片及叶柄解剖结构进行了比较研究,探讨了不同环境胁迫下胡桃楸叶片和叶柄颉颃逆境的演化结构规律.结果表明:阴生的胡桃楸叶片面积明显大于阳生的;阴生的胡桃楸叶柄表皮细胞平均直径大于阳生的;阴生的胡桃楸叶栅栏组织细胞小、排列疏松,而阳生的叶栅栏组织细胞大、排列紧密;数理统计结构特征参数表现为阴生胡桃楸叶主脉及叶柄木质部管孔链平均长度均小于阳生的;阴生胡桃楸叶及叶柄已演化出颉颃荫湿逆境的解剖结构,这些结构特征均为植物体与荫蔽环境之间相互适应的结果.

1. Through its potential to enhance progeny performance, admixture (between-population crossing) may promote invasiveness of alien plants. The few studies that tested this idea found evidence for heterosis (positive effects of admixture) in the first generation (F-1), but have not considered further generations. In this paper, we test whether admixture benefits can be maintained in subsequent generations of an invasive plant. 2. We follow up on a previous study, in which we made crosses between plants of Mimulus guttatus from native-(western North America) and invaded-range populations (New Zealand and Scotland), and showed that admixture increases F-1 performance. Here, we performed further crosses to create non-admixed progeny, F-1 progeny resulting from within-and between-range admixture, and subsequent F-2 progeny both through outcrossing and through self-fertilization. As heterosis, out and inbreeding depression may depend on the environment, we assessed progeny performance under benign (well-watered) and drought-stress conditions in a greenhouse experiment. 3. We found that non-admixed progeny of M. guttatus were outperformed by admixed progeny (averaged across F-1 and F-2), particularly by progeny from between-ange admixture. However, the benefit of admixture was stronger in F-1 than in F-2 progeny, especially when the F-2 was produced by self-fertilization. The benefit of admixture also depended on the range of origin and the test environment. 4. Synthesis. Our findings indicate that increased performance of admixed F-1 progeny is partly maintained in the F-2 progeny. Admixture might thus significantly boost performance of an invasive plant across multiple generations.