Spatio-temporal variation in fitness responses to contrasting environments inArabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

The evolutionary response of organisms to global climate change is expected to be strongly conditioned by preexisting standing genetic variation. In addition, natural selection imposed by global climate change on fitness-related traits can be heterogeneous over time. We estimated selection of life-history traits of an entire genetic lineage of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana occurring in north-western Iberian Peninsula that were transplanted over multiple years into two environmentally contrasting field sites in southern Spain, as southern environments are expected to move progressively northwards with climate change in the Iberian Peninsula. The results indicated that natural selection on flowering time prevailed over that on recruitment. Selection favored early flowering in six of eight experiments and late flowering in the other two. Such heterogeneity of selection for flowering time might be a powerful mechanism for maintaining genetic diversity in the long run. We also found that north-western A. thaliana accessions from warmer environments exhibited higher fitness and higher phenotypic plasticity for flowering time in southern experimental facilities. Overall, our transplant experiments suggested that north-western Iberian A. thaliana has the means to cope with increasingly warmer environments in the region as predicted by trends in global climate change models.

A hierarchical Bayesian Beta regression approach to study the effects of geographical genetic structure and spatial autocorrelation on species distribution range shifts

“…The strong spatial effects detected by spatial HBMs for genetic cluster C1 may account for this result, as the response of A. thaliana to GCC is also expected to be more homogeneous. Recent experimental data from transplant experiments using accessions from this genetic cluster indicate that this scenario may be plausible, as A. thaliana performed well in warmer environments, highlighting the potential of this genetic cluster to cope with warming (Exposito‐Alonso, Brennan, Alonso‐Blanco, & Picó, ). The same applies to genetic cluster C4, which is also distributed continuously in the typically Mediterranean SW Iberian Peninsula.…”

Phenological and fitness responses to climate warming depend upon genotype and competitive neighbourhood in Arabidopsis thaliana

“…One possible reason for these conflicting findings is that plasticity itself can be under selection (Merila & Hendry, ). Relative to other important traits like recruitment, flowering time in A. thaliana has been found to be highly plastic, and this plasticity is associated with higher fitness (Exposito‐Alonso, Brennan, Alonso‐Blanco, & Pico, ). This study sheds light on the extreme ends of the flowering time plasticity spectrum by contrasting the highly plastic S NIL with the highly canalized F NIL.…”

Quantifying temporal change in plant population attributes: insights from a resurrection approach

“…Experiments were conducted at El Castillejo Botanical Garden of Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park in south-west Spain ( Fig. 1 ) following the same protocols used in previous successful experiments with Iberian A. thaliana accessions at the same facility ( Méndez-Vigo et al 2013 ; Manzano-Piedras et al 2014 ; Exposito-Alonso et al 2018 a ). In short, all individuals were replicated six times in all experiments (3 experiments × 88 individuals × 6 replicates = 1584 experimental units).…”

“…recruitment and fecundity ( Méndez-Vigo et al 2013 ). Besides, flowering time estimated for A. thaliana in field conditions strongly correlates with fitness, estimated as the product between survivorship and fecundity ( Exposito-Alonso et al 2018 a ).…”

“…We carried out a resurrection approach on A. thaliana through three specific objectives. First, we conducted a series of field experiments to estimate temporal variation in flowering time, a key developmental trait with adaptive significance affecting fitness in A. thaliana ( Weinig et al 2002 ; Korves et al 2007 ; Ågren and Schemske 2012 ; Manzano-Piedras et al 2014 ; Exposito-Alonso et al 2018 a ). Besides, experiments were also performed to detect hidden genetic variation in flowering time in study populations over time.…”