Chronic selection for early reproductive phenology in an annual plant across a steep, elevational gradient of growing season length.

Autor: Ensing DJ; Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada., Sora DMDH; Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada., Eckert CG; Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Evolution; international journal of organic evolution [Evolution] 2021 Jul; Vol. 75 (7), pp. 1681-1698. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Jun 06.
DOI: 10.1111/evo.14274
Abstrakt: Colonization along ubiquitous gradients of growing season length should require adaptation of phenological traits, driven by natural selection. Although phenology often varies with season length and genetic differentiation in phenological traits sometimes seems adaptive, few studies test whether natural selection is responsible for these patterns. The annual plant Rhinanthus minor is genetically differentiated for phenology across a 1000-m elevational gradient of growing season length in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. We estimated phenotypic selection on five phenological traits for three generations of naturally occurring individuals at 12 sites (n = 10,112), and two generations of genetically and phenotypically more variable transplanted populations at nine of these sites (n = 24,611). Selection was weak for most traits, but consistently favored early flowering across the gradient rather than only under short seasons. There was no evidence that apparent selection favoring early reproduction arose from failure to consider all components of fitness, or variation in other correlated phenological traits. Instead, selection for earlier flowering may be balanced by selection for strong cogradient phenological plasticity that indirectly favors later flowering. However, this probably does not explain the consistency of selection on flowering time across this steep, elevational gradient of growing season length.
(© 2021 The Authors. Evolution © 2021 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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