Ecological sorting and character displacement contribute to the structure of communities of Clarkia species

Despite long‐standing interest in the evolutionary ecology of plants that share pollinators, few studies have explored how these interactions may affect communities during both community assembly (ecological sorting) and through ongoing, in situ evolution (character displacement), and how the effects of these interactions may change with community context. To determine if communities display patterns consistent with ecological sorting, we assessed the frequency of co‐occurrence of four species of Clarkia in the southern Sierra foothills (Kern County, CA, USA). To investigate potential character displacement, we measured pollination‐related traits on plants grown in a greenhouse common garden from seed collected in communities with one, two, or four Clarkia species. Among the four species of Clarkia in this region, the two species that are often found in multi‐species communities also co‐occur with one another more frequently than expected under a null model. This pattern is consistent w...