Abstract
While stress is expected to increase developmental instability (DI), not all studies confirm this. This heterogeneity could in part be due to the use of subtle differences between the left and right side of bilateral symmetrical organisms to quantify DI, leading to large sampling error obscuring associations with DI. Traits that develop simultaneously more than twice (such as flower petals or bird feathers) reflect individual DI more reliably, such that stronger associations are expected to emerge. Furthermore, some studies have shown differences in strengths of associations among populations. We studied the association between individual genetic diversity and DI in flower petals within three Opuntia echios populations inhabiting Galápagos. Quantifying individual DI through variation in length and width of a high number of petals within individual cacti, lead to a strong association between DI and genetic diversity in one population. We conclude that associations between individual DI and genetic diversity can be more easily revealed by measuring traits that develop repeatedly.
Highlights
Environmental and genetic challenges influence developing systems in that they may disturb development
Results between Genetic Diversity and fluctuating asymmetry (FA) (Fluctuating Asymmetry) performed analyses of covariance to test whether genetic diversity is related to FA
Notwithstanding high Measurement errors (ME) in width asymmetry, both asymmetry measures varied between individuals
Summary
Environmental and genetic challenges influence developing systems in that they may disturb development. It is generally accepted that organisms try to overcome such disturbances or noise in a process called developmental stability, the reproducible development of a genotype under given environmental conditions [1,2]. Developmental instability (DI) represents the inability to buffer development against random noise and is mostly quantified by fluctuating asymmetry (FA), non-directional deviations from the average perfect symmetrical traits. Many studies have investigated the effect of (genetic or environmental) stress on developing systems, and whether there is a relationship between FA and stress. Asymmetry is often used or proposed as a measure of stress [10,11,12,13,14,15], where FA could serve as an easy, low cost, and non-invasive measure to quantify vulnerable populations [8,16]. The reported heterogeneity of conclusions, led to a general belief that FA is not an omnipresent simple measure of Symmetry 2016, 8, 116; doi:10.3390/sym8110116 www.mdpi.com/journal/symmetry
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