Drought and life-history strategies in Heliophila (Brassicaceae)

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Authors	MUCINA Ladislav MUMMENHOFF Klaus WINTER Pieter ADRIAAN van Niekerk MALÍK MANDÁKOVÁ Terezie LYSÁK Martin
Year of publication	2024
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	New Phytologist
MU Faculty or unit	Central European Institute of Technology
Citation
web	https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.19352
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/nph.19352
Keywords	Brassicaceae; Classification & Regression Tree; climatic seasonality; drought regime; Heliophila; life history; phylogenetic tree; Random Forests
Description	Monroeet al.(2019) claim that drought regimes predict life-history strategies in plants, using the taxonomically complex southern African genus Heliophila (Brassicaceae) as a model. The authors focused on a relatively short period (34 yr) of remote-sensing data,focusing on the Vegetative Health Index (VHI), ostensibly to represent drought frequency, and the authors use the term ‘historical drought regimes’ as a background to gain insight into the evolution of life histories in the genus. Here, we argue that some of the procedures and conclusions presented by Monroeet al.(2019) are either simplistic or flawed due to methodological and conceptual errors. We shall demonstrate that Monroeet al.(2019): relied on an inaccurate distribution data set; uncritically presented and applied the phylogenetic data; and presented a conceptual error by using the a short-term climatic dataset to infer the change in life history on evolutionary time scales.
Related projects:	The polyploid past versus diploid present: evolution and diversification of the southern African Heliophila