Natural selection drives leaf divergence in experimental populations of Senecio lautus under natural conditions.

ABSTRACT: Leaf morphology is highly variable both within and between plant species. This study employs a combination of common garden and reciprocal transplant experiments to determine whether differences in leaf shape between Senecio lautus ecotypes has evolved as an adaptive response to divergent ecological conditions.We created a synthetic population of hybrid genotypes to segregate morphological variation between three ecotypes and performed reciprocal transplants where this hybrid population was transplanted into the three adjacent native environments. We measured nine leaf morphology traits across the experimental and natural populations at these sites.We found significant divergence in multivariate leaf morphology toward the native character in each environment, suggesting environmenta

SUBMITTER: Richards TJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6662321 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature