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Costs associated with the evolution of selfing in North American populations of Arabidopsis lyrata?

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Abstract

Selfing can evolve if the transmission advantage of selfers outweighs the negative effects of inbreeding depression. It has been hypothesised that on the long term, selfing lineages are an evolutionary dead end, in part due to genetic degradation resembling that of Muller’s ratchet in asexual lineages. There is a lack of empirical evidence for costs of selfing due to genetic degradation in recently evolved selfers. We tested whether such costs are apparent in recently established selfing populations of the generally outcrossing species Arabidopsis lyrata. Specifically, we compared selfing and outcrossing populations in their growth performance, and for traits that play a putative role in defence against herbivores. In line with our expectations, selfing populations had reduced germination rates, growth however was similar to outcrossing populations. Plants from selfing populations showed no consistent reduction in herbivore-defence traits, and were equally palatable to caterpillars of the moth Mamestra brassicae. There were also no differences between outcrossers and selfers in phenotypic plasticity for putative defence traits and palatability after induction by herbivores. Overall, we interpret our results as showing some evidence for persistent costs of selfing due to drift or inbreeding load in terms of reduced seedling establishment, but providing no support for the hypothesis that selfing populations should be more susceptible to generalist herbivores, or rely more on induced defence.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Barbara Mable for kindly providing the seeds that formed the basis of this experiment, Wayne Dawson for statistical advice, Christine Giele, Katya Mamonova and Carolin Bogs for practical assistance, the gardeners for their help with plant maintenance, Anne Kempel for discussion, Leon Westerd for providing caterpillar eggs and Gerald Mende and Dieter Schopper for use of the animal rearing facilities and practical advice; four anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Jens Joschinski

    Present address: Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocentre, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074, Würzburg, Germany

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  1. Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstrasse 10, 78457, Constance, Germany

    Jens Joschinski, Mark van Kleunen & Marc Stift

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  1. Jens Joschinski
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  2. Mark van Kleunen
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Correspondence to Marc Stift.

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Fig. S1.

Timing of germination for outcrossing (solid) and selfing (dashed) populations. Data is expressed as percentage of all sown seeds (per population), and based on eight seeds per seed family with 3 to 30 seed families per population (see Table 1 for more details). (EPS 65 kb)

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Joschinski, J., van Kleunen, M. & Stift, M. Costs associated with the evolution of selfing in North American populations of Arabidopsis lyrata?. Evol Ecol 29, 749–764 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-015-9786-3

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