Jens-Christian Svenning (@jcsvenning.bsky.social)

🌳🍃 New study: Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) shows high adaptability, thriving in disturbed landscapes, shifting niches across continents, and with potential to expand further and contribute to ecosystem resilience under global change 🌍 See our paper👉 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #trees

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A global-change winner? Global expansion potential, ecological drivers and hybridization risk of the disturbance-promoted honey locust (Gleditsia) - Discover Plants Rapid environmental change and anthropogenic activities are reshaping plant distributional patterns and facilitating novel species compositions. The disturbance-tolerant, globally distributed Honey Locust (Gleditsia) provides a compelling case for studying these novel dynamics. In this study we assessed (1) the realized and potential distribution of the North American Gleditsia triacanthos in its native and introduced ranges, (2) ecological range determinants, (3) potential niche shifts between the North and South American populations of G. triacanthos, and (4) overlaps in the introduced distribution of G. triacanthos and native congeners, as an indicator of risks of hybridization or competitive exclusion. These analyses were based on species distribution modelling, using the Maximum Entropy algorithm. Habitat suitability of G. triacanthos was highest in regions with high Human Modification Index values, indicating anthropogenic disturbance as a major driver of its potential range. The results show a niche difference between the native North American and introduced South American populations of G. triacanthos, supporting high plasticity and local adaptive capacity as previously reported. Further, the results show wide potential for overlapping distributions between G. tricanthos and congeneric species outside North America, pointing to substantial potential for hybridization. This likely poses risks to the genetic integrity of geographically restricted taxa, such as G. caspica in the Caucasus region, but might also provide genetic diversity that could help local populations adapt to global change or, alternatively, create new invasive hybrid linages. Understanding the distributional dynamics and biotic interactions of globally expanding species like G. triacanthos is critical for anticipating ecological change and guiding adaptive conservation and management strategies. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44372-025-00358-2