Transgenerational plasticity as an important mechanism affecting response of clonal species to changing climate

Abstract

In spite of the increasing number of studies on the importance of transgenerational plasticity for species response to novel environments, its effects on species ability to respond to climate change are still largely unexplored. We study the importance of transgenerational plasticity for response of a clonal species Festuca rubra. Individuals from four natural populations representing two levels of temperature and two levels of precipitation were cultivated in four growth chambers that simulate the temperature and precipitation of origin of the populations (maternal phase). Each population was represented in each growth chamber. After 6 months, single young ramets of these plants were reshuffled among the growth chambers and let to grow for additional 2 months (offspring phase). The results show that transgenerational effects (i.e., maternal phase conditions) significantly modify species response to novel climates, and the direction and intensity of the response depend on the climate of origin of the plants. For traits related to recourse acquisition, the conditions of maternal phase, either alone or in interaction mainly with climate of origin, had stronger effect than the conditions of cultivation. Overall, the maternal climate interacted more intensively with the climate of origin than with the offspring climate. The direction of the effect of the maternal climate was of different directions and intensities depending on plant origin and trait studied. The data demonstrated strong significant effects of conditions during maternal phase on species response to novel climates. These transgenerational affects were, however, not adaptive. Still, transgenerational plasticity may be an important driver of species response to novel conditions across clonal generations. These effects thus need to be carefully considered in future studies exploring species response to novel climates. This will also have strong effects on species performance under increasingly variable climates expected to occur with the climate change.

Multiple simultaneous treatments change plant response from adaptive parental effects to within‐generation plasticity, inArabidopsis thaliana

“…Adaptive parental environmental effects of these treatments have also been reported in other species. For example, parental ‘wounding’ induced resistance against natural herbivory pressure in Mimulus guttatus (Colicchio ). Similarly, parental ‘shading’ is known to enhance the adaptation of Campanula americana to its shaded natural habitats (Galloway and Etterson ).…”

“…In theory, these effects are advantageous when parental, and offspring environments are correlated (Ezard et al , Leimar and McNamara , Groot et al ), and this is supported by experimental evidence. For instance, offspring of wounded Mimulus guttatus plants showed reduced herbivory damage in two field sites (Colicchio ), and offspring of shaded or non‐shaded Campanulastrum americanum plants showed increased fitness when their light regime matched their parent's environment (Galloway and Etterson ). However, in a meta‐analysis Uller et al (2013) found only weak evidence that offspring perform better on average in environments similar to that of the maternal plant.…”

DNA methylation as a possible mechanism affecting ability of natural populations to adapt to changing climate

“…We used the term genotype throughout the subsequent text for the plants as we worked with individuals that were genetically differentiated from each other thus representing true independent genotypes (Supplementary material Appendix 1). Details on the plant collection and cultivation are provided in Münzbergová et al (2017). In October 2015, we chose six genotypes per population and planted 12 single ramets per genotype separately into 10 × 10 × 10 cm pots in a greenhouse.…”

“…Based on our previous results Münzbergová et al (2017) and studies of Wilschut et al (2016) and Verhoeven et al (2016) we predicted that 1) demethylation will significantly affect performance of the plants, 2) the effects of demethylation will strongly interact with plant origin and conditions of cultivation, 3) after demethylation, the plant response to conditions of cultivation will be less affected by origin of the population because epigenetic differentiation is expected to be an important driver of phenotypic between population differentiation, 4) effects of demethylation will differ between genotypes, 5) the differences between genotypes will depend on their genetic relatedness and 6) epigenetic differentiation of the populations will have an adaptive value, i.e. naturally methylated plants will perform better at their home environment than foreign plants, while demethylated plants will not show such a pattern.…”

“…growth chamber) conditions . The species possesses high degree of plasticity and strong genetic differentiation ) and its performance is also affected by conditions of cultivation of the maternal clones (Münzbergová and Hadincová 2017). Species performance is thus highly variable and it can be expected that at least part of this variation is linked to epigenetic variation.…”