Abstract
Whole-genome duplication (WGD) is ubiquitous in plants. Recent reviews and meta-analyses, aiming to understand how such phenotypic transition could facilitate neopolyploid establishment, demonstrated multifarious immediate effects of WGD on fitness and reproductive traits. Yet, little is known about how short-term modifications evolve through time. Such a comparison among new and established polyploid lineages is crucial to understand which effects of WGD promote or impede polyploid survival. We performed a meta-analysis to determine how WGD affects morphological, cellular, and fitness traits in autotetraploid individuals compared to their diploid progenitors. We studied how established tetraploids differed from diploids compared to neotetraploids, to further learn about the fate of WGD-associated phenotypic effects during polyploid establishment. The short-term effects of WGD were an increase in size of morphological traits and cells, accompanied by a decrease in fitness and the number of cells. After establishment, the morphological effect persisted, but cellular and fitness components reverted back to the values observed in the diploid ancestors. Our results suggest that the larger morphology of autotetraploids is not a constraint to establishment. However, other observable effects of genome doubling disappeared with time, suggesting that solving cellular and fitness constraints are critical aspects for polyploid establishment.
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