Journal article
Adaptive significance of flowering time variation across natural seasonal environments in Arabidopsis thaliana
A Fournier-Level, MA Taylor, JF Paril, A Martínez-Berdeja, MC Stitzer, MD Cooper, JL Roe, AM Wilczek, J Schmitt
New Phytologist | Published : 2022
DOI: 10.1111/nph.17999
Abstract
The relevance of flowering time variation and plasticity to climate adaptation requires a comprehensive empirical assessment. We investigated natural selection and the genetic architecture of flowering time in Arabidopsis through field experiments in Europe across multiple sites and seasons. We estimated selection for flowering time, plasticity and canalization. Loci associated with flowering time, plasticity and canalization by genome-wide association studies were tested for a geographic signature of climate adaptation. Selection favored early flowering and increased canalization, except at the northernmost site, but was rarely detected for plasticity. Genome-wide association studies reveal..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful to M. Blazquez, G. Coupland, C. Dean, M.Hoffmann, M. Koornneef, H. Kuittinen, and O. Savolainen for hosting the experiments; S. Welch and M. Knapp for designing and setting up the on-site weather stations; J. Anderson, D.Eaton, J. F. Egan, C. Lopez-Gallego, L. J. Martin, B. Moyers, C. D. Muir, R. Petipas, R. N. Schaeffer, S. Sim, and A. Walker for managing the field experiments; L. Burghardt, C. Cooper, M.Cooper, E. Josephs, A. Lockwood, J. Mears, S. Myllyla, C.Oakley, R. Palmer, S. Rudder, A. Stathos, S. Welch, and E.Bishop-Von Wettberg for field help; many Brown undergraduates for fruit counts; and D. Runcie for advice on the photothermal time calculation. We thank Angel Ferrero-Serano for providing additional environmental descriptors. We finally thank John Kelly and two anonymous reviewers for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. This work was supported by NSF grants EF-0425759, GRFP-2014157993, and DEB-1754102, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, and a University of Melbourne Miegunyah Fellowship.