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Population Biology |
Kellogg Biological Station and Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Michigan State University, 3700 East Gull Lake Drive, Hickory Corners, Michigan 49060 USA
Received for publication May 2, 2000. Accepted for publication February 13, 2001.
| ABSTRACT |
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800 km apart. Most of the variance was within individual plants; repeatabilities were all <0.35. There were highly significant differences between flowers measured in different weeks and also highly significant plant by week interactions, indicating that the among-plant variation was not consistent over time. There was substantial variance among adjacent flowers on the same stalk, particularly in the gynoecium. This high within-plant variance is partly responsible for the low heritability of floral traits in the field and the weak selection on floral traits found in previous studies of wild radish.
Key Words: Brassicaceae common garden experiment floral morphology phenotypic variation population differentiation Raphanus raphanistrum within-plant variance
| INTRODUCTION |
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Within-plant floral variation can be partitioned into "spatial" variation, that is, variation among flowers open at the same time on a plant, and temporal variation, that is, variation among flowers open at different times across the flowering period of each individual. Spatial variation can be further partitioned into variation among inflorescences, among flowers within inflorescences, and within flowers for traits with multiple copies in a flower (e.g., petals and stamens). Temporal variation in floral traits may be due to ontogenetic changes as well as changes in the environment over time. Spatial and temporal variation can have different effects on selection on floral traits. For example, if there are temporal changes in floral size, but different individual plants maintain their relative ranking over time (i.e., no time by individual interaction), then pollinators on each given day will tend to select the same plants and selection will not be weakened. In contrast, if flower size varies more within individuals than among them, or there is a strong time by individual interaction, then pollinators will not consistently choose one plant and selection will be weakened.
Therefore, determining the sources of variation in floral morphology is crucial to a full understanding of floral evolution. A number of studies have measured pollinator-mediated selection and the heritability of floral traits (e.g., Galen, 1989
; Johnston, 1991
; Conner and Via, 1993
; Carr and Fenster, 1994
; Campbell, 1996
; Conner et al., 1996
). There are also a number of studies examining variation in floral traits among populations and among plants (e.g., Waser and Price, 1984
; Schwaegerle, Garbutt, and Bazzaz, 1986
; Herrera, 1990
). Fewer studies have additionally measured variation among flowers within plants (e.g., Campbell, 1992
; Svensson, 1992
; Dominguez et al., 1998
), and fewer still explicitly examine floral variation within plants over time (Ellstrand and Mitchell, 1988
; Armbruster, 1991
; Herrera, 1993
; Mazer and Delesalle, 1996
). To our knowledge, no study has quantified variation within individual flowers or tested time by individual interactions.
A further motivation for understanding sources of floral variation within populations and individuals is to help explain differences between environments in heritabilities of floral traits. Previous studies have found that heritabilities of wild radish floral traits were much lower in the field than in a very similar greenhouse experiment and that this was due in part to increased environmental variation in the field (Conner and Via, 1993
; Conner et al., unpublished data).
To increase our understanding of the sources of environmental variation in the field, we examined variation in seven floral traits at six levels in wild radish, Raphanus raphanistrum. We measured variation between two distant populations and among plants within populations. Within plants, we measured variation among flowers produced at different times, among inflorescences produced at the same time, and among adjacent flowers within inflorescences. Finally, we measured variation among the petals and stamens within individual flowers.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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A field at the Kellogg Biological Station in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, USA, was tilled to simulate the highly disturbed sites in which wild radish are normally found. Field-collected seeds from two populations of wild radish, one from Kalamazoo County and one from a previously studied population from Binghamton, New York (Conner and Via, 1993
), were used. Both populations were located in alfalfa fields. Seeds were planted in a 10 x 12 grid with 1-m spacing in April 1998. Sixty maternal plants from each population were represented in the grid, assigned randomly within each population to every other grid position. At each position, 12 seeds were planted from one of the maternal plants. At first flowering, one of the plants that germinated was randomly chosen to represent its maternal family. Only 67 of the plants germinated and survived to flowering, 60 of which were included in the study, 27 from Michigan and 33 from New York. Six plants flowered too late, and one died too soon for inclusion in the study.
Due to an unusually dry season, the field was watered roughly once every 2 wk after planting to encourage germination and flowering. The plots were partially weeded to prevent the dominant lamb's quarter (Chenopodium album) from completely shading the study plants, but it is likely that interspecific competition occurred.
We measured a total of 1059 flowers from all plants during a 7-wk period in June and July 1998. From an individual plant, the first samples consisted of the third and fourth flower on the central stalk the day after each opened. Every week following the initial sample of the fourth flower, we collected the two newest flowers from two randomly selected side stalks on the same plant. Within each flower, we measured the lengths and widths of the outer, showy parts (the limb) of two petals on either side of a haphazardly chosen short stamen (Fig. 1). We also measured the lengths of the inner parts, or claws, of these petals; we refer to this as the corolla tube length (Conner and Via, 1993
). We measured the lengths of the two long stamens on either side of the same short stamen, both short stamens, and the pistil. These traits have been studied extensively in wild radish and have been shown to be important to pollination success in wild radish and other species (e.g., Bell, 1985
; Galen and Newport, 1987
; Murcia, 1990
; Harder and Barrett, 1993
; Conner, Davis, and Rush, 1995
; Conner and Rush, 1996
). Measurements were taken with digital calipers using the same methods as Conner and Via (1993)
. The number of ovules was also counted.
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To determine whether temporal changes in flower size were due to environmental changes vs. ontogeny, a simplified repeated measures model was fit also using REML in PROC MIXED. The geometric mean of the six linear dimensions (all traits except ovule number) was used as a measure of overall flower size (Mosimann and James, 1979
). In our data the geometric mean was highly correlated (r = 0.995) with the first principal component of the six floral dimensions. Time was measured in two different ways: calendar week and plant age. Plant age was the number of weeks since flowering, with week 1 as the first week each plant flowered.
To examine the relative magnitudes of among- and within-plant variability in floral traits within each week, variance components from fully nested random models were estimated using REML (PROC MIXED; SAS, 1989
). Variance components were estimated among plants, among flowering stalks within plants, among flowers within stalks, and within flowers. The within-flower component did not exist for pistil length and ovule number, because only one measurement per flower was possible. Since none of the tests of population or population by week interaction were significant (see RESULTS), populations were combined for simplicity. This analysis was not done for the first week because only the central stalk was measured for most plants that week, resulting in no replication of stalks, and because the flowers were measured the day after they opened that week only (see above). The proportion of among-plant variance from this analysis represents the repeatability within weeks; an overall repeatability was also calculated within each population as the proportion of total variance due to among-plant variation.
The repeatability (r) is the proportion of total phenotypic variance that is due to differences among individuals (Falconer and Mackay, 1996
). The numerator of the repeatability consists of additive and nonadditive genetic variation and the "general environmental variance," which arises from permanent phenotypic differences among individuals caused by the environment. Therefore, the repeatability sets an upper bound on narrow sense heritability of the trait, because the numerator of the latter includes additive genetic variation but does not include nonadditive genetic variance or the general environmental variance. The complement of the repeatability (1 r) is the proportion of population phenotypic variance that is due to within-individual variation (the "special environmental variance"), which is caused by the spatial and temporal environmental variation experienced by each individual as well as ontogenetic changes.
| RESULTS |
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| DISCUSSION |
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These results also suggest that selection on these traits would be weakened by this within-plant variation, and indeed little selection on floral morphology was found over 3 yr in a previous study (Conner, Rush, and Jennetten, 1996
; Conner et al., 1996
; but see Morgan and Conner, 2001
). The overall repeatabilities for floral traits in this study were all <0.35 (Table 2). While the repeatabilities within weeks were higher, between 0.3 and 0.6 for most traits in most weeks (among plant variation in Fig. 4), the highly significant plant by week interactions (Table 1) suggest that plants do not maintain their relative rankings for floral traits over time. Therefore, the rankings for pollinator visitation and fitness would also be likely to change over time, leading to a weakening of selection.
Previous work has suggested the presence of long-distance gene flow in wild radish, perhaps through contamination of agricultural seed with wild radish seeds, which could reduce genetic differentiation over long distances (Kercher and Conner, 1996
). This may account for the lack of population differentiation for floral traits found in this study. It is also possible that the generalist suite of pollinators causes similar selection on floral traits in both locations. A final possibility is that the low levels of germination (only about half the maternal families germinated; see METHODS) caused strong selection so that the plants that successfully germinated from the two populations were similar to each other. This possibility requires a correlation between germination and floral traits; however, in an earlier study (Conner and Via, 1993
) all phenotypic and genetic correlations between germination time and floral traits were 0.22 or less, and few were significant.
The vast majority of flowers measured within the same week on the same plant were measured the same day. This fact provides a possible explanation for why there was more variation among adjacent flowers on the same stalk than among stalks (Fig. 4). Since wild radish flowers open acropetally (sequentially moving up the stalk), two adjacent flowers on the same stalk are almost always different in age. However, the average floral age likely did not differ greatly between stalks, because on each stalk the newest and second newest flower were measured. Therefore, the greater variation among flowers within stalks may have been largely due to differences in floral age.
Our study sheds light on the sources of phenotypic variance in floral morphology and suggests that changes in the environment over a growing season may often be important determinants of floral variation. The plant by week interaction (Table 1, Fig. 2) further suggests that there may be genotype by environmental variation for floral traits, although our design could not address this directly. Our study was also not designed to determine what biotic or abiotic environmental factors caused this variation, but we can speculate on what factors are most likely. There were no detectable effects of rainfall or temperature on floral variation in this study (Williams and Conner, unpublished data). The within-plant variation could be caused by changes in inter- or intraspecific competition over the season. However, Mazer and Schick (1991)
found no significant effect of population density on among-plant differences in petal area in Raphanus sativus and Wolfe (1992)
reported no effect of resource status on flower size in Hydrophyllum appendiculatum. Another possible biotic environmental factor is herbivory, since Strauss, Conner, and Rush (1996)
found that herbivory affects variation among plants in petal size; a variety of herbivores attack wild radish at our site (personal observations; A. Agrawal, University of Toronto, personal communication). A challenge for future work is to discover the environmental factors underlying this within-plant variation and determine whether these are similar to the environmental factors that cause among-plant floral variation. This knowledge will provide a comprehensive understanding of the genetic and environmental sources of floral variation.
| FOOTNOTES |
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2 Author for reprint requests (Conner{at}kbs.msu.edu
). ![]()
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