No evidence for adaptation to local rhizobial mutualists in the legume Medicago lupulina.

ABSTRACT: Local adaptation is a common but not ubiquitous feature of species interactions, and understanding the circumstances under which it evolves illuminates the factors that influence adaptive population divergence. Antagonistic species interactions dominate the local adaptation literature relative to mutualistic ones, preventing an overall assessment of adaptation within interspecific interactions. Here, we tested whether the legume Medicago lupulina is adapted to the locally abundant species of mutualistic nitrogen-fixing rhizobial bacteria that vary in frequency across its eastern North American range. We reciprocally inoculated northern and southern M. lupulina genotypes with the northern (Ensifer medicae) or southern bacterium (E. meliloti) in a greenhouse exper

SUBMITTER: Harrison TL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5478075 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature