Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY
Volume 92, Issue 5, Pages 819-825Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.3732/ajb.92.5.819
Keywords
colonizing weed; norm of reaction; phenotypic plasticity; purple loosestrife; soil moisture; tristyly
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In colonizing species, high phenotypic plasticity can contribute to Survival and propagation in heterogenous adventive environments. and it has been suggested as a predictor of invasiveness. Observation of natural populations of an invasive species, Lythrum salicaria salicaria. indicated extensive variation in its growth and reproductive traits. Phenotypic plasticity of different life history traits of L. salicaria was investigated using vegetative clones of each of 12 genotypes from one population in Ontario, Canada. We chose soil moisture as the treatment factor because of its importance in wetland species and raised all 12 genotypes in each of four soil moisture treatments. We examined an array of vegetative and reproductive traits, including root and shoot mass, shoot and inflorescence length. total seed set, floral mass, and morphometric variables. All observed vegetative as well as reproductive traits, demonstrated significant phenotypic plasticity in response to soil moisture treatment. Even the significant separation involved significant genotype by environment interactions, suggesting that soil moisture may modify the relative positions of anthers and stigma. Compared to vegetative traits, most reproductive traits demonstrated crossing reaction norms, implying that the average differences in those traits among genotypes vary with the environment maintaining the genetic variation in a population..
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