As anthropogenic impacts on the natural world escalate, there is increasing interest in the role of humans in dispersing seeds. But the consequences of this Human‐Mediated Dispersal (HMD) on plant spatial dynamics are little studied. In this paper, we ask how secondary dispersal by HMD affects the dynamics of a natural plant metapopulation. In addition to dispersal between patches, we suggest within‐patch processes can be crit...

In their recent paper, Staver and Hansen ( Global Ecology and Biogeography , 2015, 24, 985–987) refute the case made by Hanan et al. ( Global Ecology and Biogeography , 2014, 23, 259–263) that the use of classification and regression trees (CARTs) to predict tree cover from remotely sensed imagery (MODIS VCF) inherently introduces biases, thus making the resulting tree cover unsuitable for showing alternative stable states thr...

Many studies have shown plant species' dispersal distances to be strongly related to life‐history traits, but how well different traits can predict dispersal distances is not yet known. We used cross‐validation techniques and a global data set (576 plant species) to measure the predictive power of simple plant traits to estimate species' maximum dispersal distances. Including dispersal syndrome (wind, animal, ant, ballistic, a...

Interspecific gene flow can lead to the formation of hybrid populations that have a competitive advantage over the parental populations, even for hybrids from a cross between crops and wild relatives. Wild prickly lettuce ( Lactuca serriola ) has recently expanded in Europe and hybridization with the related crop species (cultivated lettuce, L. sativa ) has been hypothesized as one of the mechanisms behind this expansion. In a...

The area of Caricion davallianae alliance in Switzerland has been considerably reduced and fragmented during the last 150 years. We assessed the genetic variability, inbreeding level, and among‐population differentiation of two common habitat‐specific plant species, Carex davalliana SM. and Succisa pratensis Moench, in 18 Caricion davallianae fen meadows subjected to fragmentation. We used a spatial field design of fen systems...