Journal
AMERICAN NATURALIST
Volume 178, Issue 1, Pages 75-87Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/660281
Keywords
phenotypic plasticity; environmental heterogeneity; spatial variation; Erodium cicutarium; selection; serpentine soils
Categories
Funding
- Center for Population Biology at UC Davis
- UC Natural Reserve System
- National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Adaptive phenotypic plasticity and adaptive genetic differentiation enable plant lineages to maximize their fitness in response to environmental heterogeneity. The spatial scale of environmental variation relative to the average dispersal distance of a species determines whether selection will favor plasticity, local adaptation, or an intermediate strategy. Habitats where the spatial scale of environmental variation is less than the dispersal distance of a species are fine grained and should favor the expression of adaptive plasticity, while coarse-grained habitats, where environmental variation occurs on spatial scales greater than dispersal, should favor adaptive genetic differentiation. However, there is relatively little information available characterizing the link between the spatial scale of environmental variation and patterns of selection on plasticity measured in the field. I examined patterns of spatial environmental variation within a serpentine mosaic grassland and selection on an annual plant (Erodium cicutarium) within that landscape. Results indicate that serpentine soil patches are a significantly finer-grained habitat than non-serpentine patches. Additionally, selection generally favored increased plasticity on serpentine soils and diminished plasticity on non-serpentine soils. This is the first empirical example of differential selection for phenotypic plasticity in the field as a result of strong differences in the grain of environmental heterogeneity within habitats.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available