Temporal fitness fluctuations in experimental Arabidopsis thaliana populations.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the genetics of lifetime fitness is crucial to understand a species' ecological preferences and ultimately predict its ability to cope with novel environmental conditions. Yet, there is a dearth of information regarding the impact of the ecological variance experienced by natural populations on expressed phenotypic and fitness differences. Here, we follow the natural dynamics of experimental A. thaliana populations over 5 successive plantings whose timing was determined by the natural progression of the plant's life cycle and disentangle the environmental and genetic factors that drive plant ecological performance at a given locality. We show that, at the temperate latitude where the experiment was conducted, a given genotype can experience winter-, spring- or summer-annual l

SUBMITTER: Hu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5467858 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature