Transgenerational Plasticity in Flower Color Induced by Caterpillars

Abstract

Variation in flower color due to transgenerational plasticity could stem directly from abiotic or biotic environmental conditions. Finding a link between biotic ecological interactions across generations and plasticity in flower color would indicate that transgenerational effects of ecological interactions, such as herbivory, might be involved in flower color evolution. We conducted controlled experiments across four generations of wild radish (Raphanus sativus, Brassicaceae) plants to explore whether flower color is influenced by herbivory, and to determine whether flower color is associated with transgenerational chromatin modifications. We found transgenerational effects of herbivory on flower color, partly related to chromatin modifications. Given the presence of herbivory in plant populations worldwide, our results are of broad significance and contribute to our understanding of flower color evolution.

Differential Effects of Transgenerational Plasticity on Morphological and Photosynthetic Properties Between an Invasive Plant and Its Congeneric Native One

“…Differential effects of transgenerational plasticity on morphological and photosynthetic properties of invasive and native plants were found, which could be explained by adaptative strategies to maternal light treatment(Galloway 2005;Marin et al 2018). So, we tentatively concluded that effects of transgenerational plasticity on morphological and photosynthetic properties of offspring ramets were species-speci c.Transgenerational plasticity is regarded as particularly maternal environments may be affected the phenotypes of offsprings(González et al 2016;Li et al 2018;Mar et al 2021). Our results showed that maternal environment had a signi cant effect on biomass accumulation of W. trilobata, but had no signi cant effect of W. chinensis.…”

“…Phenotypes of plant offsprings may be affected by particularly maternal environmental conditions, which named as transgenerational plasticity (Galloway and Etterson 2007;González et al 2016; Mar et al 2021). Germination rate was signi cantly increased when seeds of Campanula americana were planted into their maternal light environment (Galloway 2005).…”

Phenotypic plasticity in plant defense across life stages: Inducibility, transgenerational induction, and transgenerational priming in wild radish

“…We analyzed 188 samples from 94 plants in the F2 generation using two primer combinations. The To test whether herbivory was linked to the probability of occurrence of methylation per locus, we proceeded as follows (23). Because methylation and demethylation cannot occur at the same time, we considered nonmethylation events only when demethylation did not occur on the marker.…”

“…MSAP marker scores involving a change from 1 to 0 denoted a methylation event of the marker involved. Only fragments >300 base pairs in size were included to reduce the potential impact of size homoplasy (23). A new sample (n = 94 plant individuals) by marker (n = 402) score matrix was obtained, where each element showed whether the sample involved had experienced a methylation event (score = 1) or not (score = 0) in the corresponding marker (or missing when a demethylation event occurred and therefore a methylation event was not possible).…”

Herbivory and jasmonate treatment affect reproductive traits in wild Lima bean, but without transgenerational effects

“…Kellenberger et al (2018) looked for transgenerational effects of herbivory in flower and reproductive traits of Brassica rapa and found that changes in flower volatiles were not transmitted to the next generation, but some morphological changes were maintained in subsequent generations. Other studies have found transgenerational effects of herbivory on flower traits like proportion of flowering plants and number flowers (Steets and Ashman, 2010;Nihranz et al, 2020) and flower color (Sobral et al, 2021). Interestingly, these types of effects may depend on the reproductive mechanism (cleistogamy vs. chasmogamy, Steets and Ashman, 2010) or inbreeding (Nihranz et al, 2020).…”