Walter, Greg M;
Monro, Keyne;
Terranova, Delia;
la Spina, Enrico;
Majorana, Maria;
Pepe, Giuseppe;
Clark, James;
... Bridle, Jon; + view all
(2024)
Environmental effects on genetic variance are likely to constrain adaptation in novel environments.
Evolution Letters
, Article qrad065. 10.1093/evlett/qrad065.
(In press).
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Abstract
Adaptive plasticity allows populations to cope with environmental variation but is expected to fail as conditions become unfamiliar. In novel conditions, populations may instead rely on rapid adaptation to increase fitness and avoid extinction. Adaptation should be fastest when both plasticity and selection occur in directions of the multivariate phenotype that contain abundant genetic variation. However, tests of this prediction from field experiments are rare. Here, we quantify how additive genetic variance in a multivariate phenotype changes across an elevational gradient, and test whether plasticity and selection align with genetic variation. We do so using two closely related, but ecologically distinct, sister species of Sicilian daisy (Senecio, Asteraceae) adapted to high and low elevations on Mt. Etna. Using a quantitative genetic breeding design, we generated and then reciprocally planted c. 19,000 seeds of both species, across an elevational gradient spanning each species’ native elevation, and then quantified mortality and five leaf traits of emergent seedlings. We found that genetic variance in leaf traits changed more across elevations than between species. The high-elevation species at novel lower elevations showed changes in the distribution of genetic variance among the leaf traits, which reduced the amount of genetic variance in the directions of selection and the native phenotype. By contrast, the low-elevation species mainly showed changes in the amount of genetic variance at the novel high elevation, and genetic variance was concentrated in the direction of the native phenotype. For both species, leaf trait plasticity across elevations was in a direction of the multivariate phenotype that contained a moderate amount of genetic variance. Together, these data suggest that where plasticity is adaptive, selection on genetic variance for an initially plastic response could promote adaptation. However, large environmental effects on genetic variance are likely to reduce adaptive potential in novel environments.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Environmental effects on genetic variance are likely to constrain adaptation in novel environments |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/evlett/qrad065 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad065 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEN). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | additive genetic variance, covariance tensor, G-matrix, novel environments, phenotypic plasticity, Senecio |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10186937 |
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