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Alternative Developmental and Transcriptomic Responses to Host Plant Water Stress in a Butterfly metapopulation

ABSTRACT: Predicting how climate change affects biotic interactions and their evolution poses a challenge. Plant-insect herbivore interactions are particularly sensitive to climate change, as climate-induced changes in plant quality cascade into the performance of insect herbivores. Whereas the immediate survival of herbivore individuals depends on plastic responses to climate change induced nutritional stress, long-term population persistence via evolutionary adaptation requires genetic variation for these responses. In order to assess the prospects for population persistence under climate change, it is therefore crucial to characterise response mechanisms to climate change induced stressors, and quantify their variability in natural populations. Here, we test developmental and transcriptomic responses to water limitation induced host plant quality change in a Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia) metapopulation. We combine nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy on the plant metabolome, larval developmental assays and an RNA seq analysis of the larval transcriptome. We observed that responses to feeding on water limited plants, in which amino acids and aromatic compounds are enriched, showed marked intrapopulation variation, with individuals of some families performing better on control and others on water limited plants. The transcriptomic responses were concordant with the developmental responses: Families exhibiting opposite developmental responses also produced opposite transcriptomic responses, e.g. in growth associated intracellular signalling. The opposite developmental and transcriptomic responses are associated with between families differences in organic compound catabolism and storage protein production. The results reveal heritable intrapopulation variability in plasticity, suggesting potential for evolutionary responses to drought-induced changes in host plant quality in the Finnish M. cinxia metapopulation.

ORGANISM(S): Melitaea cinxia

PROVIDER: GSE159376 | GEO | 2021/02/25

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Genome-wide transcriptional profiling of Arabidopsis thaliana to a combination of heatwave and drought under ambient and elevated CO2. Goal of this study was elucidate the transcriptional responses to a combination of heat wave and drought, and to see how these responses are modifed under future climate (high) CO2. Climate changes increasingly threaten plant growth and productivity. Such changes are complex and involve multiple environmental factors, including rising CO2 levels and climate extreme events. As the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying plant responses to realistic future climate extreme conditions are still poorly understood, a multiple organizational level-analysis (i.e. eco-physiological, biochemical and transcriptional) was performed, using Arabidopsis exposed to incremental heat wave and water deficit under elevated CO2.The climate extreme resulted in biomass reduction, photosynthesis inhibition, and considerable increases in stress parameters. Photosynthesis was a major target as demonstrated at the physiological and transcriptional levels. In contrast, the climate extreme treatment induced a protective effect on oxidative membrane damage, most likely as a result of strongly increased lipophilic antioxidants and membrane-protecting enzymes. Elevated CO2 significantly mitigated the negative impact of a combined heat and drought, as apparent in biomass reduction, photosynthesis inhibition, chlorophyll fluorescence decline, H2O2 production and protein oxidation. Analysis of enzymatic and molecular antioxidants revealed that the stress-mitigating CO2 effect operates through up-regulation of antioxidant defense metabolism, as well as by reduced photorespiration resulting in lowered oxidative pressure. Therefore, exposure to future climate extreme episodes will negatively impact plant growth and production, but elevated CO2 is likely to mitigate this effect. Transcriptome analysis was performed by Agilent Arabidopsis (V4) 4x44K platform which represented all known genes in the Arabidopsisgenome. Experiments were performed using a modified loop design (Knapen et al., 2009). This design consisted of total 8 arrays; sample from each treatment was labelled once and has 4 biological replicates, two of which were labelled in red and two in green

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Alternative Developmental and Transcriptomic Responses to Host Plant Water Stress in a Butterfly metapopulation

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