Meta-analysis reveals the tempo of evolutionary parallelism of local adaptation between native and introduced ranges of plant species

Natural selection can cause evolution to be predictable despite the randomness of processes that generate genetic variation. However, the predictability of evolution can be difficult to evaluate, owing to the complexity of environmental conditions that determine selection in each species, and our inability to rewind and replay the tape of life to directly assess evolution’s repeatability. Invasive species are valuable systems for evaluating evolutionary predictability, as populations in native and introduced ranges evolve separately, yet often encounter similar environmental challenges, providing potential for parallel patterns of local adaptation between ranges. However, it remains unclear how pervasive such parallelism is, or how rapidly it evolves following species’ introductions. To address these questions, we carried out a meta-analysis of clinal divergence in native and introduced populations of the same plant species and evaluated the tempo of evolutionary parallelism of clines between ranges. We show that clinal divergence in introduced ranges was shallower than clinal divergence in native ranges for size, morpho-physiology, and phenology traits, but similar for reproductive and defense traits. Evolutionary parallelism of clinal divergence increased with the age of the species’ introduction, with greater parallelism in relatively old introductions caused by increased alignment of the direction of clinal divergence between the ranges rather than changes in the relative magnitudes of divergence in each range. These results suggest a high predictability of local adaptation in mature species’ introductions, with drift, genetic constraints and founder effects likely contributing to evolutionary lags in local adaptation within young introductions.