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Aim: Trait?based approaches are increasingly important in ecology and biogeography, but progress is often hampered by the availability of high?quality quantitative trait data collected in the field. Alternative sources of trait information include scientific floras and taxonomic monographs. Here we test the reliability and usefulness of trait data acquired from scientific floras against trait values measured in the field, and those in TRY, the most comprehensive global plant trait database. Location: Tenerife and La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. Methods: We measured leaf area and specific leaf area (SLA) in the field for 451 native vascular plant species and compared them with equivalent trait data digitised from the most recent and comprehensive guide of the Canarian flora, and data sourced from TRY. We regressed the field?measured traits against their equivalents estimated from the literature and used the regression models from one island to predict the trait values on the other island. Results: For leaf area, linear models showed good agreement between values from the scientific flora and those measured in the field (r2 = 0.86). These models were spatially transferable across islands. In contrast, for SLA we found a weak relationship between field?measured values and the best estimates from the scientific flora (r2 = 0.11). Insufficient data were available in the TRY database for our study area to calculate trait correlations with other data sources. Conclusions: Scientific floras can act as useful data sources for quantitative plant trait data for some traits but not others, whilst the TRY database contains many traits, but is incomplete in species coverage for our study region, and oceanic islands in general.

Climate change and invasive species are among the biggest threats to global biodiversity and ecosystem function. Although the individual impacts of climate change and invasive species are commonly assessed, we know far less about how a changing climate may impact invading species. Increases in water temperature due to climate change are likely to alter the thermal regime of UK rivers, and this in turn may influence the performance of invasive species such as signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus), which are known to have deleterious impacts on native ecosystems. We evaluate the relationship between water temperature and two key performance traits in signal crayfish—feeding and burrowing rate—using thermal experiments on wild‐caught individuals in a laboratory environment. Although water temperature was found to have no significant influence on burrowing rate, it did have a strong effect on feeding rate. Using the thermal performance curve for feeding rate, we evaluate how the thermal suitability of three UK rivers for signal crayfish may change as a result of future warming. We find that warming rivers may increase the amount of time that signal crayfish can achieve high feeding rate levels. These results suggest that elevated river water temperatures as a result of climate change may promote higher signal crayfish performance in the future, further exacerbating the ecological impact of this invasive species.

© 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Understanding how and why rates of evolutionary diversification vary is a key issue in evolutionary biology, ecology, and biogeography. Evolutionary rates are the net result of interacting processes summarized under concepts such as adaptive radiation and evolutionary stasis. Here, we review the central concepts in the evolutionary diversification literature and synthesize these into a simple, general framework for studying rates of diversification and quantifying their underlying dynamics, which can be applied across clades and regions, and across spatial and temporal scales. Our framework describes the diversification rate (d) as a function of the abiotic environment (a), the biotic environment (b), and clade-specific phenotypes or traits (c); thus, d~a,b,c. We refer to the four components (a–d) and their interactions collectively as the “Evolutionary Arena.” We outline analytical approaches to this framework and present a case study on conifers, for which we parameterize the general model. We also discuss three conceptual examples: the Lupinus radiation in the Andes in the context of emerging ecological opportunity and fluctuating connectivity due to climatic oscillations; oceanic island radiations in the context of island formation and erosion; and biotically driven radiations of the Mediterranean orchid genus Ophrys. The results of the conifer case study are consistent with the long-standing scenario that low competition and high rates of niche evolution promote diversification. The conceptual examples illustrate how using the synthetic Evolutionary Arena framework helps to identify and structure future directions for research on evolutionary radiations. In this way, the Evolutionary Arena framework promotes a more general understanding of variation in evolutionary rates by making quantitative results comparable between case studies, thereby allowing new syntheses of evolutionary and ecological processes to emerge.

Understanding how and why rates of evolutionary diversification vary is a key issue in evolutionary biology, ecology, and biogeography. Evolutionary rates are the net result of interacting processes summarized under concepts such as adaptive radiation and evolutionary stasis. Here, we review the central concepts in the evolutionary diversification literature and synthesize these into a simple, general framework for studying rates of diversification and quantifying their underlying dynamics, which can be applied across clades and regions, and across spatial and temporal scales. Our framework describes the diversification rate (d) as a function of the abiotic environment (a), the biotic environment (b), and clade‐specific phenotypes or traits (c); thus, d ~ a,b,c. We refer to the four components (a–d) and their interactions collectively as the “Evolutionary Arena.” We outline analytical approaches to this framework and present a case study on conifers, for which we parameterize the general model. We also discuss three conceptual examples: the Lupinus radiation in the Andes in the context of emerging ecological opportunity and fluctuating connectivity due to climatic oscillations; oceanic island radiations in the context of island formation and erosion; and biotically driven radiations of the Mediterranean orchid genus Ophrys. The results of the conifer case study are consistent with the long‐standing scenario that low competition and high rates of niche evolution promote diversification. The conceptual examples illustrate how using the synthetic Evolutionary Arena framework helps to identify and structure future directions for research on evolutionary radiations. In this way, the Evolutionary Arena framework promotes a more general understanding of variation in evolutionary rates by making quantitative results comparable between case studies, thereby allowing new syntheses of evolutionary and ecological processes to emerge. publishedVersion