Abstract
Admixture can act to expand genetic variation and generate new trait combinations or functional trait values compared to parental lines. We examined how admixture between geographically distinct and/or genetically distinct parental genotypes could create either expanded genetic variation or novel phenotypes in the recombinant individuals of a F2 population of Arabidopsis thaliana accessions. In three different experiments, we grew 13 F2’s of Arabidopsis that differ in the genetic distance and/or geographic location of their parental source. The experiments tested the response of F2 recombinant populations to drought, high temperature and overwintering in field conditions. We estimated a multi-trait phenotypic space based on phenology, growth and fitness traits using a non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis. We found that approximately half (51%) of the F2 recombinant populations across the different experiments shifted their phenotype and occupied a different phenotypic space than their parents. Fitness changes in shifted recombinant F2’s populations depended upon the experimental conditions. A shift in the phenotypic space was associated with an increase in fitness under drought conditions but the opposite was true under high temperature conditions where the non-shifted F2 recombinant populations had a higher fitness. Therefore, one recombinant event following admixture was sufficient to shift offspring phenotypes away from parental phenotypes in half of admixture events and the resulting phenotypic shifts could result in a fitness increase under specific environmental conditions. Our study provides experimental evidence that admixture can provide a rapid shift in plant phenotypes with a resulting increase in fitness suggesting that such events are an important mechanism for rapid evolution post-introduction.
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Acknowledgements
This work was made possible by the assistance of Dr. J. Zhong, Mitchell O’Neil, Thom Lee, Ashlee Nowell, Ivy Doroch, Keith Reed and others. We are deeply thankful to Dr. R. Barrantes for his contribution with data analysis, Dr. Nick Gotelli for his advice in the permutation test, and anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. Funding for this study was provided by a Fulbright Scholarship to KPL and a NIFA-HATCH award to JM.
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KPL and JM designed research. KPL collected the data, perform analysis, and prepared figures and tables. KPL and JM wrote the manuscript.
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Palacio-Lopez, K., Molofsky, J. Phenotypic shifts following admixture in recombinant offspring of Arabidopsis thaliana. Evol Ecol 35, 575–593 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-021-10118-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-021-10118-9