CEFE, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France.
Área de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, Córdoba, Spain.
Nat Commun. 2024 Jun 18;15(1):5185. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49267-0.
Plant diversity is shaped by trade-offs between traits related to competitive ability, propagule dispersal, and stress resistance. However, we still lack a clear understanding of how these trade-offs influence species distribution and population dynamics. In Arabidopsis thaliana, recent genetic analyses revealed a group of cosmopolitan genotypes that successfully recolonized Europe from its center after the last glaciation, excluding older (relict) lineages from the distribution except for their north and south margins. Here, we tested the hypothesis that cosmopolitans expanded due to higher colonization ability, while relicts persisted at the margins due to higher tolerance to competition and/or stress. We compared the phenotypic and genetic differentiation between 71 European genotypes originating from the center, and the south and north margins. We showed that a trade-off between plant fecundity and seed mass shapes the differentiation of A. thaliana in Europe, suggesting that the success of the cosmopolitan groups could be explained by their high dispersal ability. However, at both north and south margins, we found evidence of selection for alleles conferring low dispersal but highly competitive and stress-resistance abilities. This study sheds light on the role of ecological trade-offs as evolutionary drivers of the distribution and dynamics of plant populations.
植物多样性受到与竞争能力、繁殖体扩散和抗逆性相关的性状之间权衡的影响。然而，我们仍然缺乏对这些权衡如何影响物种分布和种群动态的清晰认识。在拟南芥中，最近的遗传分析揭示了一组世界性基因型，它们在上一次冰期后成功地从中心重新殖民到欧洲，除了它们的南北边缘，将旧的（遗迹）谱系排除在分布之外。在这里，我们检验了这样一个假设，即世界性的基因型由于更高的殖民能力而扩张，而遗迹由于对竞争和/或压力的更高耐受性而在边缘地区得以留存。我们比较了来自中心、南部和北部边缘的 71 个欧洲基因型的表型和遗传分化。我们表明，植物繁殖力和种子质量之间的权衡关系塑造了拟南芥在欧洲的分化，这表明世界性群体的成功可以用它们较高的扩散能力来解释。然而，在南北边缘，我们都发现了选择赋予低扩散但高度竞争和抗逆能力等位基因的证据。本研究揭示了生态权衡作为植物种群分布和动态的进化驱动力的作用。
