Context-Dependent Parental Effects on Clonal Offspring Performance

Abstract

Parental environments may potentially affect offspring fitness, and the expression of such parental effects may depend on offspring environments and on whether one considers an individual offspring or all offspring of a parent. Using a well-studied clonal herb, Alternanthera philoxeroides, we first grew parent plants in high and low soil-nutrient conditions and obtained 1st generation clonal offspring from these two environments. Then we grew offspring of these two types of 1st generation clonal offspring also in high and low nutrient conditions. We measured and analyzed mean performance and summed performance of the four types of 2nd generation clonal offspring. High nutrient availability of parental environments markedly increased both mean performance (i.e., the average fitness measure across all individual offspring produced by a parent) and summed performance (i.e., the sum of the fitness measure of all offspring produced by a parent) of the 2nd generation clonal offspring. The positive parental effects on summed performance of the 2nd generation clonal offspring were stronger when the 1st generation clonal offspring grew in the high instead of the low nutrient conditions, but the positive parental effects on their mean performance did not depend on the nutrient environments of the 1st generation clonal offspring. The results provide novel evidence that parental environmental effects persist across vegetative generations and strongly depend on offspring environments and levels of plants.

Previous exposure mediates the response of eelgrass to future warming via clonal transgenerational plasticity

“…Clonal TGP in response to drought (or reductions in soil moisture) occurs across diverse plant groups including trees ( Populus ; Raj et al 2011), herbs ( Trifolium repens ; Gonzalez et al 2016), and grasses ( Festuca rubra ; Münzbergová et al 2019). Clonal TGP also occurs in response to nutrient addition in an Arctic sedge ( Eriphorum vaginatum ; Schwaegerle et al 2000), and a highly invasive herb ( Alternanthera philoxeroides ; Dong et al 2018). Our results appear to be the first to demonstrate clonal TGP in response to temperature in a plant.…”

Manipulation of cytosine methylation does not remove latitudinal clines in two invasive goldenrod species in Central Europe

“…; hexaploid plants of S. altissima have so far been found only in Belgium; Verloove et al., 2017) and S. gigantea raised from field‐collected rhizome cuttings, and showed that with increasing latitude of origin, plants flowered earlier and at a smaller size. These clines in phenology and size could reflect vegetative carry‐over effects (Dong et al., 2018). To test whether such clines are transmitted sexually, we collected seeds of 25 S. canadensis and 24 S. gigantea populations along a latitudinal gradient from Switzerland to southern Sweden, and grew the offspring in a common garden in Konstanz, Germany.…”

Effects of parental light environment on growth and morphological responses of clonal offspring

“…Apart from the modification of DNA methylation, parental shading effects may be partly attributed to changes in quality of propagule provisioning induced by parental environments (Herman & Sultan ; Dong et al . ). In the present study, shaded parent plants produced smaller offspring ramets compared to unshaded parent plants (ramets weight average of 26.5 mg under high light versus 23.5 mg under low light), indicating a possible lower investment in storage resources containing carbohydrate compounds and N for the early growth of clonal offspring.…”

“…; Dong et al . , , , , ) to examine ecological questions. Thus, here we also used A. philoxeroides as a model to test the role of epigenetics in parent shading effects.…”