Kin selection, kin recognition and kin discrimination in plants revisited: A claim for considering environmental and genetic variability.

Abstract

Considering kin selection in the study of interacting conspecific plants broadens our vision of plant behaviour and brings arguments to explain plant-plant positive interactions. These interactions are the subject of abundant research in community ecology and the role of relatedness in interactions between individuals has become a hot topic. Indeed, the past decade has seen a steady accumulation of exciting but also controversial results regarding the behaviour of plants in the presence of genetically related neighbours, i.e., kin discrimination. In addition to the existence of some methodological and semantic aspects that should be strengthened to accurately reveal the occurrence of kin recognition or selection, we claim here that some key aspects must be considered to increase our ability to detect kin recognition and selection in plants. These aspects include intraspecific variability, the fact that plant-plant interactions are context-dependent, and the lifespan of species (particularly long-lived ones). Additionally, we note that the study of the population spatial genetic structure (SGS) could be a useful tool to identify candidate settings for the study of kin recognition and selection in plants. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.