scholarly journals Differences in pollination success between local and foreign flower color phenotypes: a translocation experiment with Gentiana lutea (Gentianaceae)

Author(s):  
Javier A Guitián ◽  
Mar Sobral ◽  
Tania Veiga ◽  
María Losada ◽  
Pablo Guitián ◽  
...  

Background. The adaptive maintenance of flower color variation is frequently attributed to pollinators in part because they preferentially visit certain flower phenotypes. We test whether Gentiana lutea – which shows a flower color variation (from orange to yellow) in the Cantabrian Mountains range (north of Spain) − is locally adapted to the pollinator community. Methods. We transplant orange-flowering individuals to a population with yellow-flowering individuals and vice-versa, to assess whether there is a pollination advantage in the local morph comparing its visitation rate with the foreign morph. Results. Our reciprocal transplant experiment showed no clear signal of local morph advantage at one site; thus, there is no evidence of local adaptation in Gentiana lutea to the pollinator assemblage. However, some floral visitor groups (such as Bombus pratorum, B. soroensis ancaricus and B. lapidarius decipiens) consistently preferred the local morph to the foreign morph whereas others (such as Bombus terrestris) consistently preferred the foreign morph. Discussion. We concluded that there is no evidence of local adaptation to the pollinator community in each of the two G. lutea populations studied. The consequences for local adaptation to pollinator on G. lutea flower color would depend on the variation along the Cantabrian Mountains range in morph frequency and pollinator community composition.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier A Guitián ◽  
Mar Sobral ◽  
Tania Veiga ◽  
María Losada ◽  
Pablo Guitián ◽  
...  

Background. The adaptive maintenance of flower color variation is frequently attributed to pollinators in part because they preferentially visit certain flower phenotypes. We test whether Gentiana lutea – which shows a flower color variation (from orange to yellow) in the Cantabrian Mountains range (north of Spain) − is locally adapted to the pollinator community. Methods. We transplant orange-flowering individuals to a population with yellow-flowering individuals and vice-versa, to assess whether there is a pollination advantage in the local morph comparing its visitation rate with the foreign morph. Results. Our reciprocal transplant experiment showed no clear signal of local morph advantage at one site; thus, there is no evidence of local adaptation in Gentiana lutea to the pollinator assemblage. However, some floral visitor groups (such as Bombus pratorum, B. soroensis ancaricus and B. lapidarius decipiens) consistently preferred the local morph to the foreign morph whereas others (such as Bombus terrestris) consistently preferred the foreign morph. Discussion. We concluded that there is no evidence of local adaptation to the pollinator community in each of the two G. lutea populations studied. The consequences for local adaptation to pollinator on G. lutea flower color would depend on the variation along the Cantabrian Mountains range in morph frequency and pollinator community composition.


PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e2882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier A. Guitián ◽  
Mar Sobral ◽  
Tania Veiga ◽  
María Losada ◽  
Pablo Guitián ◽  
...  

BackgroundThe adaptive maintenance of flower color variation is frequently attributed to pollinators partly because they preferentially visit certain flower phenotypes. We tested whetherGentiana lutea—which shows a flower color variation (from orange to yellow) in the Cantabrian Mountains range (north of Spain)—is locally adapted to the pollinator community.MethodsWe transplanted orange-flowering individuals to a population with yellow-flowering individuals and vice versa, in order to assess whether there is a pollination advantage in the local morph by comparing its visitation rate with the foreign morph.ResultsOur reciprocal transplant experiment did not show clear local morph advantage in overall visitation rate: local orange flowers received more visits than foreign yellow flowers in the orange population, while both local and foreign flowers received the same visits in the yellow population; thus, there is no evidence of local adaptation inGentiana luteato the pollinator assemblage. However, some floral visitor groups (such asBombus pratorum,B. soroensis ancaricusandB. lapidarius decipiens) consistently preferred the local morph to the foreign morph whereas others (such asBombus terrestris) consistently preferred the foreign morph.DiscussionWe concluded that there is no evidence of local adaptation to the pollinator community in each of the twoG. luteapopulations studied. The consequences for local adaptation to pollinator onG. luteaflower color would depend on the variation along the Cantabrian Mountains range in morph frequency and pollinator community composition.


Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Kelly L. Bennett ◽  
William Owen McMillan ◽  
Jose R. Loaiza

Ae. (Stegomyia) aegypti L. and Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus Skuse mosquitoes are major arboviral disease vectors in human populations. Interspecific competition between these species shapes their distribution and hence the incidence of disease. While Ae. albopictus is considered a superior competitor for ecological resources and displaces its contender Ae. aegypti from most environments, the latter is able to persist with Ae. albopictus under particular environmental conditions, suggesting species occurrence cannot be explained by resource competition alone. The environment is an important determinant of species displacement or coexistence, although the factors underpinning its role remain little understood. In addition, it has been found that Ae. aegypti can be adapted to the environment across a local scale. Based on data from the Neotropical country of Panama, we present the hypothesis that local adaptation to the environment is critical in determining the persistence of Ae. aegypti in the face of its direct competitor Ae. albopictus. We show that although Ae. albopictus has displaced Ae. aegypti in some areas of Panama, both species coexist across many areas, including regions where Ae. aegypti appear to be locally adapted to dry climate conditions and less vegetated environments. Based on these findings, we describe a reciprocal transplant experiment to test our hypothesis, with findings expected to provide fundamental insights into the role of environmental variation in shaping the landscape of emerging arboviral disease.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett M Janzen ◽  
María Rocío Aguilar-Rangel ◽  
Carolina Cíntora-Martínez ◽  
Karla Azucena Blöcher-Juárez ◽  
Eric González-Segovia ◽  
...  

Populations are locally adapted when they exhibit higher fitness than foreign populations in their native habitat. Maize landrace adaptations to highland and lowland conditions are of interest to researchers and breeders. To determine the prevalence and strength of local adaptation in maize landraces, we performed a reciprocal transplant experiment across an elevational gradient in Mexico. We grew 120 landraces, grouped into four populations (Mexican Highland, Mexican Lowland, South American Highland, South American Lowland), in Mexican highland and lowland common gardens and collected phenotypes relevant to fitness, as well as reported highland-adaptive traits such as anthocyanin pigmentation and macrohair density. 67k DArTseq markers were generated from field specimens to allow comparison between phenotypic patterns and population genetic structure. We found phenotypic patterns consistent with local adaptation, though these patterns differ between the Mexican and South American populations. While population genetic structure largely recapitulates drift during post-domestication dispersal, landrace phenotypes reflect adaptations to native elevation. Quantitative trait QST was greater than neutral FST for many traits, signaling divergent directional selection between pairs of populations. All populations exhibited higher fitness metric values when grown at their native elevation, and Mexican landraces had higher fitness than South American landraces when grown in our Mexican sites. Highland populations expressed generally higher anthocyanin pigmentation than lowland populations, and more so in the highland site than in the lowland site. Macrohair density was largely non-plastic, and Mexican landraces and highland landraces were generally more pilose. Analysis of δ13C indicated that lowland populations may have lower WUE. Each population demonstrated garden-specific correlations between highland trait expression and fitness, with stronger positive correlations in the highland site. These results give substance to the long-held presumption of local adaptation of New World maize landraces to elevation and other environmental variables across North and South America.


PeerJ ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. e1685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mar Sobral ◽  
María Losada ◽  
Tania Veiga ◽  
Javier Guitián ◽  
José Guitián ◽  
...  

Angiosperms diversification was primarily driven by pollinator agents, but non-pollinator agents also promoted floral evolution.Gentiana luteashows pollinator driven flower color variation in NW Spain. We test whether insect herbivores and livestock, which frequently feed inG.lutea, play a role inG. luteaflower color variation, by answering the following questions: (i) Do insect herbivores and grazing livestock show flower color preferences when feeding onG. lutea? (ii) Do mutualists (pollinators) and antagonists (seed predators, insect herbivores and livestock) jointly affectG. luteareproductive success? Insect herbivores fed more often on yellow flowering individuals but they did not affect seed production, whereas livestock affected seed production but did not show clear color preferences. Our data indicate that flower color variation ofG. luteais not affected by insect herbivores or grazing livestock.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan A. Martin ◽  
Lacy D. Chick ◽  
Matthew L. Garvin ◽  
Sarah E. Diamond

AbstractUrban-driven evolution is widely evident, but whether these changes confer fitness benefits and thus represent cases of adaptive urban evolution is less clear. We performed a multi-year field reciprocal transplant experiment of acorn-dwelling ants across urban and rural environments. Fitness trade-offs via survival were consistent with local adaptation: we found a survival advantage of the ‘home’ treatments compared to the ‘away’ treatments. Seasonal bias in survival was consistent with evolutionary patterns of gains and losses in thermal tolerance traits across the urbanization gradient, such that rural ants in the urban environment were more vulnerable in the summer, putatively due to low heat tolerance and urban ants in the rural environment were more vulnerable in winter, putatively due to an evolved loss of cold tolerance. The results for fitness via fecundity were more complex. Fecundity differences were present in the rural environment, but not the urban environment, and could reflect mismatched cues for the seasonal production of reproductives. To broadly contextualize our results, we performed a multi-species meta-analysis of urban adaptive evolution studies and found general support for local adaptation. The rural adaptation signal was stronger than for urban adaptation, consistent with the relative differences in time for adaptation to occur.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Popovic ◽  
David B. Lowry

ABSTRACTIdentifying the environmental factors responsible for natural selection across different habitats is crucial for understanding the process of local adaptation. Despite its importance, only a few studies have successfully isolated the environmental factors driving local adaptation in nature. In this study, we evaluated the agents of selection responsible local adaptation of the monkeyflower Mimulus guttatus to coastal and inland habitats in California. We implemented a manipulative field reciprocal transplant experiment at coastal and inland sites, where we excluded aboveground stressors in an effort to elucidate their role in the evolution of local adaptation. We found that excluding these stressors, most likely a combination of salt spray and herbivory, completely rescued inland plant fitness when transplanted to coastal habitat. In contrast, the exclosures in inland habitat provided limited fitness benefit for either coastal or inland plants. We have previously established that low soil water availability belowground is the most important agent of selection in inland habitat. Therefore, our study demonstrates that a distinct set of selective agents are responsible for local adaptation at opposite ends of an environmental gradient.


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