Affiliation:
1. Department of Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6
Abstract
High levels of genetic variation are often observed in natural populations, suggesting the action of processes such as frequency-dependent selection, heterozygote advantage and variable selection. However, the maintenance of genetic variation in fitness-related traits remains incompletely explained. The extent of genetic variation in obligately self-fertilizing populations of
Lobelia inflata
(Campanulaceae L.) strongly implies balancing selection.
Lobelia inflata
thus offers an exceptional opportunity for an empirical test of genotype-environment interaction (G × E) as a variance-maintaining mechanism under fluctuating selection:
L. inflata
is monocarpic and reproduces only by seed, facilitating assessment of lifetime fitness; genome-wide homozygosity precludes some mechanisms of balancing selection, and microsatellites are, in effect, genotypic lineage markers. Here, we find support for the temporal G × E hypothesis using a manipulated space-for-time approach across four environments: a field environment, an outdoor experimental plot and two differing growth-chamber environments. High genetic variance was confirmed: 83 field-collected individuals consisted of 45 distinct microsatellite lineages with, on average, 4.5 alleles per locus. Rank-order fitness, measured as lifetime fruit production in 16 replicated multilocus genotypes, changed significantly across environments. Phenotypic differences among microsatellite lineages were detected. Results thus support the G × E hypothesis in principle. However, the evaluation of the effect size of this mechanism and fitness effects of life-history traits will require a long-term study of fluctuating selection on labelled genotypes in the field.
Funder
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Cited by
3 articles.
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