Adaptive evolution can mitigate the negative effects of temperature stress on plant-pollinator interactions.

ABSTRACT: Temperature stress negatively affects various aspects of plant fitness, including plant-pollinator interactions, but whether plants can overcome these adverse effects through adaptive evolution is largely unknown. Here, we conducted a six-generation evolution experiment using fast-cycling Brassica rapa plants at ambient and elevated temperatures, with bumblebee pollination. At the end of the experiment, we re-grew the evolved genotypes at different temperatures. We phenotyped the plants and conducted pollinator bioassays to assess adaptive evolution, evolutionary trait divergence, and the evolution of heat-mediated phenotypic plasticity. We found that plants that had evolved with bumblebee pollination in both temperature regimes had higher seed set than control plants, which suffered lower

SUBMITTER: Traine J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12676098 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature