Antagonistic Effects of Assortative Mating on the Evolution of Phenotypic Plasticity along Environmental Gradients.

ABSTRACT: AbstractPrevious theory has shown that assortative mating for plastic traits can maintain genetic divergence across environmental gradients despite high gene flow. Yet these models did not examine how assortative mating affects the evolution of plasticity. We here describe patterns of genetic variation across elevation for plasticity in a trait under assortative mating, using multiple-year observations of budburst date in a common garden of sessile oaks. Despite high gene flow, we found significant spatial genetic divergence for the intercept, but not for the slope, of reaction norms to temperature. We then used individual-based simulations, where both the slope and the intercept of the reaction norm evolve, to examine how assortative mating affects the evolution of plasticity, varying the

SUBMITTER: Soularue JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7614710 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature