Higher order polyploids exhibit enhanced desiccation tolerance in the grass Microchloa caffra
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology.
| Veröffentlicht in: | Journal of experimental botany. - 1985. - 75(2024), 11 vom: 07. Juni, Seite 3612-3623 |
|---|---|
| 1. Verfasser: | |
| Weitere Verfasser: | , , , , |
| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2024
|
| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Journal of experimental botany |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article Desiccation tolerance local adaptation natural variation polyploidy resilience resurrection plants |
| Zusammenfassung: | © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. Desiccation tolerance evolved recurrently across diverse plant lineages to enable survival in water-limited conditions. Many resurrection plants are polyploid, and several groups have hypothesized that polyploidy contributed to the evolution of desiccation tolerance. However, due to the vast phylogenetic distance between resurrection plant lineages, the rarity of desiccation tolerance, and the prevalence of polyploidy in plants, this hypothesis has been difficult to test. Here, we surveyed natural variation in morphological, reproductive, and desiccation tolerance traits across several cytotypes of a single species to test for links between polyploidy and increased resilience. We sampled multiple natural populations of the resurrection grass Microchloa caffra across an environmental gradient ranging from mesic to xeric in South Africa. We describe two distinct ecotypes of M. caffra that occupy different extremes of the environmental gradient and exhibit consistent differences in ploidy, morphological, reproductive, and desiccation tolerance traits in both field and common growth conditions. Interestingly, plants with more polyploid genomes exhibited consistently higher recovery from desiccation, were less reproductive, and were larger than plants with smaller genomes and lower ploidy. These data indicate that selective pressures in increasingly xeric sites may play a role in maintaining and increasing desiccation tolerance and are mediated by changes in ploidy |
|---|---|
| Beschreibung: | Date Completed 07.06.2024 Date Revised 09.06.2024 published: Print Citation Status MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1460-2431 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/jxb/erae126 |