Indications of transgenerational phenotypic plasticity for morphological traits in Bromus tectorum under a two-generation reciprocal drought experiment
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Evolutionary Studies, Plant Science
- Keywords
- Bromus tectorum, cheatgrass, transgenerational phenotypic plasticity, controlled drought, morphological tradeoffs, reciprocal transplant, greenhouse experiment, invasive species, climate change, management
- Copyright
- © 2019 Moler et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Indications of transgenerational phenotypic plasticity for morphological traits in Bromus tectorum under a two-generation reciprocal drought experiment. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27915v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27915v1
Abstract
Invasive plant species such as Bromus tectorum pose a substantial threat to low-resilience ecosystems such as the sagebrush steppe in the North American intermountain west. Determining the extent to which B. tectorum expresses transgenerational morphological plasticity in response to drought is necessary for understanding how rapidly the species may acclimate to novel climates and colonize new environments. We investigated transgenerational plasticity of stomatal density, root and shoot length, and root and shoot length ratio across replicates of four genotypes reciprocally subjected to two generations of high and low watering regimes. Average stomatal density of offspring of water-limited parents did not differ based on whether they received high or low water treatments. Well-watered offspring of parents from the low water treatment had significantly longer roots and shoots than water-limited offspring. Water-limited offspring of parents from the low watering treatment displayed greater root : shoot lengths than did well-watered offspring. Additionally, genetic variation for phenotypic plasticity was detected for root and shoot length as well as the ratio of root : shoot length, but not for stomatal density. We conclude that B. tectorum is phenotypically plastic in response to drought and furthermore displays complex tradeoffs and transgenerational phenotypic plasticity for morphological traits, which together may influence both how the species will cope with climate change and our ability to control the species.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Raw data file #1 for B. tectorum transgenerational plasticity paper
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Raw data file #2 for B. tectorum transgenerational plasticity paper
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