Evolutionary constraint on low elevation range expansion: Defense‐abiotic stress‐tolerance trade‐off in crosses of the ecological model Boechera stricta

Autor: David H. Siemens, Jake Alsdurf, Riston Haugen, Jason Olsen, Gunbharpur S. Gill, Steven L. Matzner
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Ecology and Evolution, Vol 9, Iss 20, Pp 11532-11544 (2019)
Ecology and Evolution
ISSN: 2045-7758
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.5499
Popis: Most transplant experiments across species geographic range boundaries indicate that adaptation to stressful environments outside the range is often constrained. However, the mechanisms of these constraints remain poorly understood. We used extended generation crosses from diverged high and low elevation populations. In experiments across low elevation range boundaries, there was selection on the parental lines for abiotic stress‐tolerance and resistance to herbivores. However, in support of a defense‐tolerance trade‐off, extended generation crosses showed nonindependent segregation of these traits in the laboratory across a drought‐stress gradient and in the field across the low elevation range boundary. Genotypic variation in a marker from a region of the genome containing a candidate gene (MYC2) was associated with change in the genetic trade‐off. Thus, using crosses and forward genetics, we found experimental genetic and molecular evidence for a pleiotropic trade‐off that could constrain the evolution of range expansion.
Evolutionary constraints are important to understand range limits, yet the mechanisms are poorly understood. Here we used an integrative approach to show that a trade‐off between abiotic stress‐tolerance and chemical defense against herbivores may inhibit the evolution of low elevation range expansion in the ecological model Boechera stricta.
Databáze: OpenAIRE