1] Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, 3013 Bern, Switzerland [2] Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Zámek 1, 25243 Průhonice, Czech Republic.
Nat Commun. 2013;4:2875. doi: 10.1038/ncomms3875.
Biological diversity within species can be an important driver of population and ecosystem functioning. Until now, such within-species diversity effects have been attributed to underlying variation in DNA sequence. However, within-species differences, and thus potentially functional biodiversity, can also be created by epigenetic variation. Here, we show that epigenetic diversity increases the productivity and stability of plant populations. Epigenetically diverse populations of Arabidopsis thaliana produce up to 40% more biomass than epigenetically uniform populations. The positive epigenetic diversity effects are strongest when populations are grown together with competitors and infected with pathogens, and they seem to be partly driven by complementarity among epigenotypes. Our study has two implications: first, we may need to re-evaluate previous within-species diversity studies where some effects could reflect epigenetic diversity; second, we need to incorporate epigenetics into basic ecological research, by quantifying natural epigenetic diversity and testing for its ecological consequences across many different species.
物种内的生物多样性可能是影响种群和生态系统功能的重要因素。到目前为止，这种种内多样性效应归因于 DNA 序列的潜在变异。然而，种内差异，即潜在的功能多样性，也可以通过表观遗传变异产生。在这里，我们表明表观遗传多样性可以提高植物种群的生产力和稳定性。拟南芥的表观遗传多样性种群比表观遗传均匀种群的生物量多产生高达 40%。当种群与竞争者一起生长并感染病原体时，正的表观遗传多样性效应最强，而且这些效应似乎部分是由表型间的互补性驱动的。我们的研究有两个意义：首先，我们可能需要重新评估以前的种内多样性研究，其中一些效应可能反映了表观遗传多样性；其次，我们需要将表观遗传学纳入基础生态研究，通过量化自然表观遗传多样性并在许多不同物种中测试其生态后果。
