A test of the gleaner-opportunist trade-off among photosynthetic traits in Cryptophyte algae

Swanson, Jake; Dudycha, Jeffry L.; Richardson, Tammi L.; Greenwold, Matthew J.

doi:10.1101/2023.03.15.530972

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…This somewhat narrow spatial scale relative to the dispersal capacity of duckweed (Coughlan et al, 2015;Les et al, 2003;Silva et al, 2018) It is also possible that we did not observe this trade-off because the Lemna species complex as a whole is not constrained by the gleaner-opportunist trade-off. For example, some work has shown that cryptophytes (a phylum of phytoplankton) are not constrained by this trade-off for photosynthetic light acquisition (Swanson et al, 2023). Additionally, a meta-analysis showed that the gleaneropportunist trade-off does not apply across taxa of heterotrophic eukaryotes (Kiørboe & Thomas, 2020).…”

Section: Gleaner-opportunist Trade-offsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature dependence and genetic variation in resource acquisition strategies in a model freshwater plant

Gillies,

Angert,

Usui

2024

Functional Ecology

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Understanding how competition varies with environmental stress is critical to anticipating species and community responses to rapid environmental change. While the stress‐gradient hypothesis predicts the strength of competition to decrease with increasing stress, our understanding of how competition varies with stress is limited by a lack of mechanistic understanding of how resource‐use traits underlying competitive dynamics respond to stress. Here, we use duckweeds in the Lemna species complex to measure how phenotypic and genetic variation in R* (a resource acquisition trait representing the minimum resource requirement for positive population growth) varies with high‐temperature stress to better understand how stress alters competitive ability for essential resources. We found that heat stress increased the R* of Lemna plants for nitrogen acquisition. Because lower R* values predict dominance in competitive dynamics where resources are limiting, this indicates that under stressful, high temperatures, plants could experience reduced competitive ability due to the higher resources required to sustain positive population growth rates. We found minimal genetic variation in R* across 11 local genotypes within the Lemna species complex, indicating that selection on resource acquisition strategies for essential resources such as nitrogen may be constrained in nature. The expression of genetic variation in R* for nitrogen was further reduced under heat stress, suggesting that the response to selection for R* could be particularly constrained under high‐temperature stress. Contrary to predictions drawn from the gleaner–opportunist trade‐off, we did not find evidence for a trade‐off in resource acquisition strategies under benign conditions or high‐temperature stress. Plants with lower R* (i.e. higher growth rates under lower nitrogen levels) were not constrained to have lower growth rates under higher nitrogen levels, possibly because the chosen genotypes have not diverged across resource acquisition strategies or because Lemna spp. has escaped this constraint. Importantly, our work indicates that high‐temperature stress could increase sensitivity to competition through an increased requirement for resources while reducing the evolutionary potential for Lemna species to respond to selection for resource traits. This study acts as a key step to understanding the mechanistic traits behind competitive dynamics in resource‐limited and stressful environments. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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Section: Gleaner-opportunist Trade-offsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature dependence and genetic variation in resource acquisition strategies in a model freshwater plant

Gillies,

Angert,

Usui

2024

Functional Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, Senevirathna et al (2023) It is possible, however, that we did not observe this trade-off because the Lemna species complex as a whole is not constrained by the gleaner-opportunist trade-off. For example, some work has shown that cryptophytes (a phylum of phytoplankton) are not constrained by this trade-off for photosynthetic light acquisition (Swanson et al, 2023). Additionally, a meta-analysis showed that the gleaner-opportunist trade-off does not apply across taxa of heterotrophic eukaryotes (Kiørboe & Thomas, 2020).…”

Section: Gleaner-opportunist Trade-offsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature-dependence and genetic variation in resource acquisition strategies in a model freshwater plant

Gillies,

Angert,

Usui

2023

Preprint

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Understanding how competition varies with environmental stress is critical to anticipating species and community responses to rapid environmental change. While the stress-gradient hypothesis predicts the strength of competition to decrease with increasing stress, our understanding of how competition varies with stress is limited by a lack of mechanistic understanding of how resource-use traits underlying competitive dynamics respond to stress.Here, we use duckweeds in theLemnaspecies complex to measure how phenotypic and genetic variation inR*(a resource acquisition trait representing the minimum resource requirement for positive population growth) varies with high-temperature stress to better understand how stress alters competitive ability for essential resources.We found that heat stress increased theR*ofLemnaplants for nitrogen acquisition. Because lowerR*values predict dominance in competitive dynamics where resources are limiting, this indicates that under stressful, high temperatures, plants could experience increased sensitivity to competition due to the higher resources required to sustain positive population growth rates.We found minimal genetic variation inR*across 11 local genotypes within theLemnaspecies complex, indicating that selection on resource acquisition strategies for essential resources such as nitrogen may be constrained in nature. The expression of genetic variation inR*for nitrogen was further reduced under heat stress, suggesting that the response to selection forR*could be particularly constrained under high-temperature stress.Contrary to predictions drawn from the gleaner-opportunist trade-off, we did not find evidence for a trade-off in resource acquisition strategies under benign conditions or high-temperature stress. Plants with lowerR*(i.e., higher growth rates under lower nitrogen levels) were not constrained to have lower growth rates under higher nitrogen levels, possibly because the chosen genotypes have not diverged across resource acquisition strategies or becauseLemnaspp. has escaped this constraint.Importantly, our work outlines that high-temperature stress could increase sensitivity to competition through increased requirement for resources while reducing the evolutionary potential forLemnaspecies to respond to selection for resource traits. This study acts as a key step to understanding the mechanistic traits behind competitive dynamics in resource-limited and stressful environments.

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A test of the gleaner–opportunist trade‐off among photosynthetic traits in cryptophyte algae

Swanson,

Greenwold,

Richardson

et al. 2024

Ecosphere

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As photosynthetic producers, phytoplankton form the foundation of aquatic food webs. Understanding the relationships among photosynthetic traits in phytoplankton is essential to revealing how diversification of these traits allows phytoplankton to harvest energy from different light environments. We investigated whether the diversification of 15 species of cryptophytes, a phylum of phytoplankton with diverse light‐capturing pigments, showed evidence of trade‐offs among photosynthetic performance traits as predicted by the gleaner–opportunist resource exploitation framework. We constructed photosynthesis versus irradiance (P–E) curves and rapid light curves (RLCs) to estimate parameters characterizing photosynthetic performance and electron transport rate. We inferred the evolutionary relationships among the 15 species with ultraconserved genomic elements and used a phylogenetically controlled approach to test for trade‐offs. Contrary to our prediction, we observed a positive correlation between maximum photosynthetic rate, Pmax, and P–E , an indicator of a species' sensitivity to increases in light intensity when light is a scarce resource. This result could not be explained by electron transfer traits, which were uncorrelated with photosynthetic rate. Together, our results suggest that ecological diversification of light exploitation in cryptophytes has escaped the constraints of a gleaner–opportunist trade‐off. Photosynthetic trade‐offs may be context‐ or scale‐dependent, thereby only emerging when investigated in situations different from the one used here.

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A test of the gleaner-opportunist trade-off among photosynthetic traits in Cryptophyte algae

Cited by 3 publications

References 66 publications

Temperature dependence and genetic variation in resource acquisition strategies in a model freshwater plant

Temperature dependence and genetic variation in resource acquisition strategies in a model freshwater plant

Temperature-dependence and genetic variation in resource acquisition strategies in a model freshwater plant

A test of the gleaner–opportunist trade‐off among photosynthetic traits in cryptophyte algae

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