Journal
EVOLUTION
Volume 68, Issue 11, Pages 3149-3165Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/evo.12514
Keywords
Community assembly; G-matrix; genetic correlation; growth rate; stress tolerance; water-use efficiency; winter annual plants
Categories
Funding
- NSF DEB [0902173, 0844780, 0717380]
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0844780, 0717380, 0902173] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1256792] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Trade-offs are central to many topics in biology, from the evolution of life histories to ecological mechanisms of species coexistence. Trade-offs observed among species may reflect pervasive constraints on phenotypes that are achievable given biophysical and resource limitations. If so, then among-species trade-offs should be consistent with trade-offs within species. Alternatively, trait variation among co-occurring species may reflect historical contingencies during community assembly rather than within-species constraints. Here, we test whether a key trade-off between relative growth rate (RGR) and water-use efficiency (WUE) among Sonoran Desert winter annual plants is apparent within four species representing different strategies in the system. We grew progeny of maternal families from multiple populations in a greenhouse common garden. One species, Pectocarya recurvata, displayed the expected RGR-WUE trade-off among families within populations. For other species, although RGR and WUE often varied clinally among populations, among-family variation within populations was lacking, implicating a role for past selection on these traits. Our results suggest that a combination of limited genetic variation in single traits and negative trait correlations could pose constraints on the evolution of a high-RGR and high-WUE phenotype within species, providing a microevolutionary explanation for phenotypes that influence community-level patterns of abundance and coexistence.
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