Rapid environmental changes across Europe include warmer and increasingly variable temperatures, changes in soil nutrient availability, and pollinator decline. These abiotic and biotic changes can affect natural plant populations and force them to optimize resource use against competitors. To date, the evolution of competitive ability in the context of changes in nutrient availability remains understudied. In this study, we investigated whether the common calcareous grassland herb Leontodon hispidus recently evolved its competitive ability and response to nutrient availability. We compared ancestors sampled in 1995 and descendants sampled in 2018 and applied a competition treatment in combination with weekly nutrient treatments (no fertilizer, nitrogen, phosphorus, and both). We found evidence for evolution of increased competitive ability, with descendants producing more vegetative biomass than ancestors when grown under competition. Furthermore, supplementing nutrients (especially N) reduced differences in competitive ability between ancestors and descendants, suggesting that nutrients are a limiting factor in interspecific competition, which could be linked to the decreasing nitrogen emissions into the atmosphere since the 1990s. Our study demonstrates rapid contemporary evolution of competitive ability, but also the complexity of the underlying processes of contemporary evolution, and sheds light on the importance of understudied potential selection agents such as nutrient availability.

Area of Biodiversity and Conservation Department of Biology and Geology Physics and Inorganic Chemistry University Rey Juan Carlos ESCET Tulipán S N 28933 Móstoles Madrid Spain

Conservatory and Botanic Garden of the City of Geneva Chemin de L´Impératrice 16 1 1296 Chambésy Geneva Switzerland

Department of Biology and Ecology Faculty of Science University of Ostrava Chittussiho 10 710 00 Slezská Ostrava Czech Republic

Department of Plant Biodiversity Institute of Ecology and Evolution With Herbarium Haussknecht and Botanical Garden Friedrich Schiller University Jena Jena Germany

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle Jena Leipzig Leipzig Germany

Instituto de Investigación en Cambio Global Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Móstoles Madrid Spain

Meise Botanic Garden Nieuwelaan 38 1860 Meise Belgium

Plant Evolutionary Ecology Institute of Ecology Evolution and Diversity Faculty of Biological Sciences Goethe University Frankfurt Max Von Laue Str 13 60438 Frankfurt am Main Germany

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