Mating system does not predict niche breath

Self‐pollinating plants (‘selfers’) have larger geographical ranges and inhabit higher latitudes than their outcrossing relatives. This finding has led to the hypothesis that selfers also have broader climatic niches (‘niches’) because the increased likelihood of successful colonization into new areas and the initial purging of deleterious mutations could offset the inability of selfers to adapt to new environments owing to low heterozygosity. Here, we examine the niches of hundreds of closely related selfing and outcrossing species to determine whether selfers do indeed have larger niche breadths.