A domestic plant differs from its wild relative along multiple axes of within-plant trait variability and diversity.

Abstract

For 10,000 years humans have altered plant traits through domestication and ongoing crop improvement, shaping plant form and function in agroecosystems. To date, studies have focused on how these processes shape whole‐plant or average traits; however, plants also have characteristic levels of trait variability among their repeated parts, which can be heritable and mediate critical ecological interactions. Here, we examine an underappreciated scale of trait variation—among leaves, within plants—that may have changed through the process of domestication and improvement. Variability at this scale may itself be a target of selection, or be shaped as a by‐product of the domestication process. We explore how levels of among‐leaf trait variability differ between cultivars and wild relatives of alfalfa (Medicago sativa), a key forage crop with a 7,000‐year domestication history. We grew individual plants from 30 wild populations and 30 cultivars, and quantified variability in a broad suite of physical, nutritive, and chemical leaf traits, including measures of chemical dissimilarity (beta diversity) among leaves within each plant. We find that trait variability has changed over the course of domestication, with effects often larger than changes in trait means. Domestic alfalfa had elevated among‐leaf variability in SLA, trichomes, and C:N; increased diversity in defensive compounds; and reduced variability in phytochemical composition. We also elucidate fundamental relationships between trait means and variability, and between overall production of secondary metabolites and patterns of chemical diversity. We conclude that within‐plant variability is an overlooked dimension of trait diversity in a globally critical agricultural crop. Trait variability is actually higher in cultivated plants compared to wild progenitors for multiple nutritive, physical, and chemical traits, highlighting a scale of variation that may mitigate loss of trait diversity at other scales in alfalfa agroecosystems, and in other crops with similar histories of domestication and improvement.