Current and historical factors drive variation of reproductive traits in unisexual mosses in Europe: A case study

Autor: Boquete, María Teresa, Varela, Zulema, Fernández, José Angel, Calleja, Juan Antonio, Branquinho, Cristina, Chilà, Antonina, Cronberg, Nils, Cruz de Carvalho, Ricardo, Aleixo, Cristiana, Estébanez-Pérez, Belén, Fernández-González, Verónica, Baselga, Andrés, Gómez-Rodríguez, Carola, González-Mancebo, Juana María, Leblond, Sebastien, Martínez-Abaigar, Javier, Medina, Nagore G., Núñez-Olivera, Encarnación, Patiño, Jairo, Retuerto, Rubén, Vázquez-Arias, Antón, Vanderpoorten, Alain, Zechmeister, Harald G., Aboal, Jesús Ramón, 0000-0002-5886-7374, 0000-0002-3369-8420, 0000-0002-5918-7709, 0000-0001-6578-7244
Přispěvatelé: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (España), Ministerio de Asuntos Económicos y Transformación Digital (España), European Commission, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España), Xunta de Galicia, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España), Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa, UAM. Departamento de Biología, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Departamento de Zooloxía, Xenética e Antropoloxía Física, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Instituto Interdisciplinar de Tecnoloxías Ambientais (CRETUS)
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: RIUR. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de La Rioja
instname
Minerva. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
Popis: Unisexual bryophytes provide excellent models to study the mechanisms that regulate the frequency of sexual versus asexual reproduction in plants, and their ecological and evolutionary implications. Here, we determined sex expression, phenotypic sex ratio, and individual shoot traits in 242 populations of the cosmopolitan moss Pseudoscleropodium purum spanning its whole distributional range. We tested whether niche differentiation, sex-specific differences in shoot size, and biogeographical history explained the spatial variation of reproductive traits. We observed high levels of sex expression and predominantly female-biased populations, although both traits showed high intraspecific variation among populations. Sex expression and sex ratio were partly explained by current macroscale environmental variation, with male shoots being less frequent at the higher end of the environmental gradients defined by the current distribution of the species. Female bias in population sex ratio was significantly lower in areas recolonized after the last glacial maximum (recent populations) than in glacial refugia (long-term persistent populations). We demonstrated that reproductive trait variation in perennial unisexual mosses is partially driven by macroscale and historical environmental variation. Based on our results, we hypothesize that sexual dimorphism in environmental tolerance and vegetative growth contribute to sex ratio bias over time, constraining the chances of sexual reproduction, especially in long-term persistent populations. Further studies combining genetic analyses and population monitoring should improve our understanding of the implications of the intraspecific variation in the frequency of sexual versus asexual reproduction in bryophyte population fitness and eco-evolutionary dynamics.
We are thankful to Bieito Rodríguez for sampling Azores Islands and to Alžběta Manukjanová for helping with the sampling in the Czech Republic. M.T. Boquete is supported by the Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación program from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (IJC2018-035018-I). J. Patiño was funded by the Support provided by the MINECO through the Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación program (IJCI- 2014-19691), the European Union through a Marie Sklodowska-Curie COFUND, Researchers' Night and Individual Fellowships Global (MSCA grant agreement No 747238, “UNISLAND”), and the MICINN through the Ramón y Cajal program (RYC-2016-20506). Z. Varela was supported by a postdoctoral research grant awarded by the Autonomous Government of Galicia (Spain). N. Cronberg was supported by Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in a Changing Climate (BECC). J. Martínez-Abaigar and E. Núñez-Olivera were supported by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Project PGC2018-093824-B-C42). R. Cruz de Carvalho was supported by a postdoctoral research grant from the project MedMossRoofs (PTDC/ATP-ARP/5826/2014) funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal). C. Aleixo was supported by the FCT through a PhD grant (SFRH/BD/141822/2018).
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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