Becker Ute, Colling Guy, Dostal Petr, Jakobsson Anna, Matthies Diethart
Department of Biology, University of Marburg, 35032, Marburg, Germany.
Oecologia. 2006 Dec;150(3):506-18. doi: 10.1007/s00442-006-0534-9. Epub 2006 Sep 6.
Spatial variation in environmental conditions can lead to local adaptation of plant populations, particularly if gene flow among populations is low. Many studies have investigated adaptation to contrasting environmental conditions, but little is known about the spatial scale of adaptive evolution. We studied population differentiation and local adaptation at two spatial scales in the monocarpic grassland perennial Carlina vulgaris. We reciprocally transplanted seedlings among five European regions (northwestern Czech Republic, central Germany, Luxembourg, southern Sweden and northwestern Switzerland) and among populations of different sizes within three of the regions. We recorded survival, growth and reproduction over three growing periods. At the regional scale, several performance traits and the individual fitness of C. vulgaris were highest if the plants were grown in their home region and they decreased with increasing transplant distance. The effects are likely due to climatic differences that increased with the geographical distance between regions. At the local scale, there were significant interactions between the effects of the population of origin and the transplant site, but these were not due to an enhanced performance of plants at their home site and they were not related to the geographical or environmental distance between the site of origin and the transplant site. The size of the population of origin did not influence the strength of local adaptation. The results of our study suggest that C. vulgaris consists of regionally adapted genotypes, and that distance is a good predictor of the extent of adaptive differentiation at large scales ( > 200 km) but not at small scales. We conclude that patterns of local adaptation should be taken into account for the efficient preservation of genetic resources, when assessing the status of a plant species and during conservation planning.
环境条件的空间变异可导致植物种群的局部适应，尤其是在种群间基因流动较低的情况下。许多研究调查了植物对不同环境条件的适应，但对适应性进化的空间尺度了解甚少。我们在一年生草本多年生植物普通刺苞菊中，研究了两个空间尺度上的种群分化和局部适应。我们在欧洲五个地区（捷克共和国西北部、德国中部、卢森堡、瑞典南部和瑞士西北部）之间以及其中三个地区内不同规模的种群之间相互移栽幼苗。我们记录了三个生长周期内的存活、生长和繁殖情况。在区域尺度上，如果普通刺苞菊植株在其原生地区生长，其几个表现性状和个体适合度最高，并且随着移栽距离的增加而降低。这些影响可能是由于区域间地理距离增加导致的气候差异。在局部尺度上，原生种群和移栽地点的影响之间存在显著的相互作用，但这并非由于植株在原生地点表现更好，也与原生地点和移栽地点之间的地理或环境距离无关。原生种群的大小并不影响局部适应的强度。我们的研究结果表明，普通刺苞菊由区域适应性基因型组成，距离是大尺度（>200公里）而非小尺度上适应性分化程度的良好预测指标。我们得出结论，在评估植物物种状况和进行保护规划时，为有效保护遗传资源，应考虑局部适应模式。
