It is well established that biotic–interspecific interactions, such as competition, mutualism, parasitism or predation, modulate species dynamics in demographic and evolutionary terms. It is also acknowledged that biotic interactions can even have major effects on local population dynamics and scale‐up to determine wider species’ ranges (Wisz et al., 2013). Notwithstanding, the study of biotic interactions has been mostly ignored in biogeography and phylogeography research, for which it has been long assumed that abiotic factors (e.g. climate) mostly drive the ecological and evolutionary processes that underlie species’ distribution. Consequently, our knowledge is scarce about the role of biotic interactions in determining spatial patterns of genetic diversity and structure. In a From the Cover article in this issue of Molecular Ecology, Ortego & Knowles (2020) address the study of positive and negative plant–plant interactions and test whether their demographic consequences translate into broadscale patterns of genomic variation in two oak species from the iconic California Floristic Province. The integrative approach undertaken in this study reveals that some models that incorporate competition or facilitation better explain genomic patterns than null models in which species respond only to variations in environmental suitability. These findings highlight the relevance of biologically informed model‐based approaches for inferring the evolutionary consequences of species’ range dynamics, which is of particular importance in today's global change context.

中文翻译：

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生物相互作用在植物志研究中很重要：人口统计学，遗传学和分布数据的综合分析

众所周知，生物种间相互作用，例如竞争，共生，寄生或捕食，可以从人口和进化角度调节物种动态。人们也认识到，生物相互作用甚至可以对当地种群动态和扩大规模以决定更广泛的物种范围产生重大影响（Wisz等，2013）。尽管如此，生物相互作用的研究在生物地理学和系统地理学研究中被大多数人忽视，长期以来，人们一直认为非生物因素（例如气候）主要驱动着构成物种分布的生态和进化过程。因此，我们对生物相互作用在决定遗传多样性和结构的空间格局中所起的作用的了解很少。在本期《从封面》中分子生态学，Ortego＆Knowles（2020）研究了植物之间正向和负向相互作用的研究，并测试了它们的人口统计学结果是否转化为标志性的加州植物区系的两个橡树种的基因组变异的广泛模式。在这项研究中采取的综合方法表明，与那些只对物种的环境适应性做出响应的无效模型相比，一些包含竞争或促进作用的模型可以更好地解释基因组模式。这些发现强调了基于生物学信息的基于模型的方法对于推断物种范围动态的进化后果的相关性，这在当今的全球变化背景下尤其重要。