Environmental patterns of adaptation after range expansion in Leontodon longirostris: The effect of phenological events on fitness‐related traits

Abstract

Premise: Because of expected range shifts associated with climate change, there is a renewed interest in the evolutionary factors constraining adaptation, among which are genetic bottlenecks, drift, and increased mutational load after range expansion.Here we study adaptation in the short-lived species Leontodon longirostris showing reduced genetic diversity and increased genetic load along an expansion route. Methods: We assessed the phenological patterns of variation, and their effect on fitness-related traits, on 42 L. longirostris populations and six populations of the sister taxa L. saxatilis in a common garden located within the current range of both species. The comparison among L. longirostris populations allowed us to test for genetic clines consistent with local adaptation, whereas the comparison between taxa provided evidence for common adaptive features at the species level. Results: We found significant within-species variability for most traits, as well as differences with its close relative L. saxatilis. In general, seeds from drier, warmer, and unpredictable habitats showed overall lower and more restricted conditions for germination, seedlings emerged later and plants flowered earlier. Consequently, genotypes from arid and unpredictable environments attained smaller reproductive sizes and allocated more biomass to reproduction. Flowering time had the strongest direct effect on total plant size, but seedling emergence also showed an important indirect effect. Conclusions: Our results show the crucial role of phenological patterns in shaping adaptive clines for major life-history stage transitions. Furthermore, the genetic load observed in L. longirostris does not seem to preclude adaptation to the climatic variability encountered along the expansion route.

Seed dormancy in Asteraceae: a global vegetation zone and taxonomic/phylogenetic assessment

“…Not only is there species-to-species variation in dormancy in the Asteraceae due to different types of non-deep PD, but there may be variation in dormancy between the cypselae produced by the same species. For example, cypselae of various species of Asteraceae differed in their germination characteristic when collected in different populations (Schütz and Urbanska, 1984;Meyer et al, 1989Meyer et al, , 1990Ren and Abbott, 1991;Maluf, 1993;Martin et al, 1995;Keller and Kollmann, 1999;Qaderi and Cavers, 2000a;Giménez-Benavides et al, 2005;Bischoff et al, 2006;Jorritsma-Wienk et al, 2007;Li and Feng, 2009;Bischoff and Muller-Schärer, 2010;Bartle et al, 2013;Torres-Martínez et al, 2017;de Pedro et al, 2021). However, the reason (genetic and/or maternal environmental effects) for population differences in dormancy was not determined in these studies.…”

“…Ecotypes/local adaptations not involving cypsela dormancy/germination have been documented in various species of Asteraceae (Wacquant and Picard, 1992;Andersson and Shaw, 1994;Imbert et al, 1999;Scherber et al, 2003;Becker et al, 2006;Sambatti and Rice, 2006;Ramsey et al, 2008;Raabová et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2012;Imani et al, 2014;Moore et al, 2014;Pánková et al, 2014;Müller et al, 2017;Molina-Montenegro et al, 2018;Sakaguchi et al, 2018;van Boheemen et al, 2019;Ollivier et al, 2020;Challagundla and Wallace, 2021;de Pedro et al, 2021;Lin et al, 2021). However, Carlina vulgaris (Jakobsson and Dinnetz, 2005) and Centaurea hyssopifolia (Sánchez et al, 2017) did not exhibit local adaptation, except the survival of juveniles of C. hyssopifolia was higher in native than in non-native sites.…”

Seed Germination and Seedling Growth Influenced by Genetic Features and Drought Tolerance in a Critically Endangered Maple

“…Seed germination is one of the most important phenological traits affecting subsequent seedling growth [22]. The GRs of A. yangbiense were different among maternal families, for example, the GRs in maternal families, CR5 and CR10, were 33% and 82%, respectively.…”