Deciphering the adjustment between environment and life history in annuals: lessons from a geographically-explicit approach in Arabidopsis thaliana.

ABSTRACT: The role that different life-history traits may have in the process of adaptation caused by divergent selection can be assessed by using extensive collections of geographically-explicit populations. This is because adaptive phenotypic variation shifts gradually across space as a result of the geographic patterns of variation in environmental selective pressures. Hence, large-scale experiments are needed to identify relevant adaptive life-history traits as well as their relationships with putative selective agents. We conducted a field experiment with 279 geo-referenced accessions of the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana collected across a native region of its distribution range, the Iberian Peninsula. We quantified variation in life-history traits throughout the entire life cycle. We built

SUBMITTER: Manzano-Piedras E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3912251 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature