Diversity in nonlinear responses to soil moisture shapes evolutionary constraints in Brachypodium
Name
jkab334.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.48 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7a9eec14410bf08ecd202bec68578110
Author(s)
Monroe, J Grey
Cai, Haoran
Des Marais, David L
Date Issued
2021
Journal
G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Citation
Monroe, J Grey, Cai, Haoran and Des Marais, David L. 2021. "Diversity in nonlinear responses to soil moisture shapes evolutionary constraints in Brachypodium." G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 11 (12).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Abstract
Water availability is perhaps the greatest environmental determinant of plant yield and fitness. However, our understanding of plant-water relations is limited because—like many studies of organism-environment interaction—it is primarily informed by experiments considering performance at two discrete levels—wet and dry—rather than as a continuously varying environmental gradient. Here, we used experimental and statistical methods based on function-valued traits to explore genetic variation in responses to a continuous soil moisture gradient in physiological and morphological traits among 10 genotypes across two species of the model grass genus Brachypodium. We find that most traits exhibit significant genetic variation and nonlinear responses to soil moisture variability. We also observe differences in the shape of these nonlinear responses between traits and genotypes. Emergent phenomena arise from this variation including changes in trait correlations and evolutionary constraints as a function of soil moisture. Our results point to the importance of considering diversity in nonlinear organism-environment relationships to understand plastic and evolutionary responses to changing climates.
Water availability is perhaps the greatest environmental determinant of plant yield and fitness. However, our understanding of plant-water relations is limited because—like many studies of organism-environment interaction—it is primarily informed by experiments considering performance at two discrete levels—wet and dry—rather than as a continuously varying environmental gradient. Here, we used experimental and statistical methods based on function-valued traits to explore genetic variation in responses to a continuous soil moisture gradient in physiological and morphological traits among 10 genotypes across two species of the model grass genus Brachypodium. We find that most traits exhibit significant genetic variation and nonlinear responses to soil moisture variability. We also observe differences in the shape of these nonlinear responses between traits and genotypes. Emergent phenomena arise from this variation including changes in trait correlations and evolutionary constraints as a function of soil moisture. Our results point to the importance of considering diversity in nonlinear organism-environment relationships to understand plastic and evolutionary responses to changing climates.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/G3JOURNAL/JKAB334
