1 3 Oecologia DOI 10.1007/s00442-013-2869-3 POPULATION ECOLOGY - ORIGINAL RESEARCH Linking vital rates to invasiveness of a perennial herb Satu Ramula Received: 9 March 2013 / Accepted: 18 December 2013 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 between regions. The population growth rate increased linearly with plant establishment, and with the survival and growth of vegetative individuals, while the survival of flowering individuals and annual seed production were not related to λ. The vital rates responsible for rapid population growth varied among populations. These findings highlight the importance of both regional and local conditions to plant population dynamics, demonstrating that individual vital rates do not necessarily correlate with λ. Therefore, to understand the role of individual vital rates in a species ability to invade, it is necessary to quantify their effect on population growth rate. Keywords Demography · Fitness · Invasion ecology · Population dynamics · Population growth rate Introduction Invasiveness is usually characterized as successful popula- tion establishment and rapid spread across heterogeneous landscapes. Species traits are of great interest in invasion ecology because they could potentially be used to predict species invasiveness outside their native range (Rejmánek and Richardson 1996). In particular, traits directly related to the fitness of individuals, such as survival, growth and fecundity (i.e. vital rates), are often used to provide infor- mation about invasiveness (reviewed by Daehler 2003; Pyšek and Richardson 2007). Comparative reviews of vascular plants have shown that invasive plant species are larger in size and have a greater reproductive output and better survival than non-invasive ones (Mason et al. 2008; van Kleunen et al. 2010). However, others have found that this is not always the case (e.g., Schumacher et al. 2009; Flores-Moreno and Moles 2013). Further, plant vital rates Abstract Invaders generally show better individual per- formance than non-invaders and, therefore, vital rates (survival, growth, fecundity) could potentially be used to predict species invasiveness outside their native range. Comparative studies have usually correlated vital rates with the invasiveness status of species, while few studies have investigated them in relation to population growth rate. Here, I examined the influence of five vital rates (plant establishment, survival, growth, flowering probability, seed production) and their variability (across geographic regions, habitat types, population sizes and population den- sities) on population growth rate (λ) using data from 37 populations of an invasive, iteroparous herb (Lupinus poly- phyllus) in a part of its invaded range in Finland. Variation in vital rates was often related to habitat type and popula- tion density. The performance of the populations varied from declining to rapidly increasing independently of habi- tat type, population size or population density, but differed Communicated by Miguel Franco. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00442-013-2869-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. S. Ramula (*) Aronia Coastal Zone Research Team, Åbo Akademi University and Novia University of Applied Sciences, Raseborgsvägen 9, 10600 Ekenäs, Finland e-mail: sramula@abo.fi S. Ramula Department of Biology, Biodiversity Unit, Lund University, 223 62 Lund, Sweden S. Ramula Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland