Abstract
Recent years have seen increasing interest in indirect genetic effects, i.e. influences on the phenotype that depend on the genotype of other conspecific individuals; however, the empirical evidence for such effects is still limited, especially in wild plant species. The present study of the clonal herb Sedum album assessed direct and indirect genetic effects on performance-related traits in a 4-year experiment with clonally replicated genotypes, grown in pairs and differing in anthocyanin pigmentation to allow separation of individuals during data collection. In agreement with the existence of indirect genetic effects, the experimentally-paired plants not only expressed their own genotype but were also affected by the genotype of their pair mate. The effect of neighbour genotype explained up to one-fourth of the variation in performance and most likely resulted from competition, imposed by the close physical contact between paired individuals and the limiting conditions used in the garden environment. Indirect genetic effects from competition have the potential to enhance the efficacy of group-level selection relative to individual selection, given the nutrient-poor and spatially-confined substrate available to plants of S. album in the natural habitat.
Highlights
Understanding how differences between genes and genotypes translate into phenotypic variation remains a primary challenge for determining a population’s adaptive potential for evolutionary change
Much attention has focused on indirect genetic effects and their evolutionary consequences, there is still a paucity of studies that document such effects in populations of wild plant species [9,18,24,25,26,27,28]
The present work extends the empirical study of indirect genetic effects to field-collected genotypes of the clonal herb S. album, planted in pairwise combinations under limiting conditions in an outdoor garden
Summary
Understanding how differences between genes and genotypes translate into phenotypic variation remains a primary challenge for determining a population’s adaptive potential for evolutionary change. While standard models of phenotypic evolution describe phenotypic variation in terms of separate genetic and environmental causes [1,2], it has been recognized for some time that environmental effects can have a genetic component, i.e. that the phenotypic trait value of an individual can depend on the expression of genes in other conspecific individuals [3,4,5,6] Such ‘indirect genetic effects’ may be widespread in animals and socially interacting microorganisms, and when neighbouring individuals of the same plant species alter each others’ environments by, for example, attracting the same infectious disease or competing for the same space, light or nutrients [7,8,9,10,11]. There should be an increased efficacy of group or kin selection relative to individual selection when the indirect genetic effects are driven by competitive interactions between individuals, because of the negative covariance between direct and indirect genetic effects that tend to arise under these circumstances [3,9,16,17,18,19,20]
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