Clonal Transgenerational Effects Transmit for Multiple Generations in a Floating Plant

Abstract

Environmental conditions of a parent plant can influence the performance of their clonal offspring, and such clonal transgenerational effects may help offspring adapt to different environments. However, it is still unclear how many vegetative generations clonal transgenerational effects can transmit for and whether it depends on the environmental conditions of the offspring. We grew the ancestor ramets of the floating clonal plant Spirodela polyrhiza under a high and a low nutrient level and obtained the so-called 1st-generation offspring ramets of two types (from these two environments). Then we grew the 1st-generation offspring ramets of each type under the high and the low nutrient level and obtained the so-called 2nd-generation offspring ramets of four types. We repeated this procedure for another five times and analyzed clonal transgenerational effects on growth, morphology and biomass allocation of the 1st- to the 6th-generation offspring ramets. We found positive, negative or neutral (no) transgenerational effects of the ancestor nutrient condition on the offspring of S. polyrhiza, depending on the number of vegetative generations, the nutrient condition of the offspring environment and the traits considered. We observed significant clonal transgenerational effects on the 6th-generation offspring; such effects occurred for all three types of traits (growth, morphology and allocation), but varied depending on the nutrient condition of the offspring environment and the traits considered. Our results suggest that clonal transgenerational effects can transmit for multiple vegetative generations and such impacts can vary depending on the environmental conditions of offspring.