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Main Authors: Brown, Alexandra L, Proulx, Stephen R
Format: Artículo científico
Language:en
Published: Evolution; international journal of organic evolution 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40966643/
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author Brown, Alexandra L
Proulx, Stephen R
author_facet Brown, Alexandra L
Proulx, Stephen R
Brown, Alexandra L
Proulx, Stephen R
collection PubMed - marine biology
contents Evolution of phenotypic polymorphism in symbiont-pairing in plant-fungal symbiosis. Brown, Alexandra L Proulx, Stephen R Symbiosis Mycorrhizae Phenotype Biological Evolution Polymorphism, Genetic Plants Temporal environmental variation presents a challenge to organisms because the optimal phenotype may vary with time. This is particularly problematic for populations in spatially uniform environments, because spatial variation is generally required to maintain genotypic polymorphism. One solution is to produce offspring that share a genotype but have developmental randomness that causes them to vary in phenotype-i.e., to be phenotypically polymorphic. This is known as adaptive coin-flipping or (in some cases) diversifying bet-hedging. Here, we investigate how the environment and trait expression affect the initial evolution of polyphenism, as well as the optimal polyphenic traits and frequency of trait expression. We focus on the case of plants allocating resources to mycorrhizal partners. We find that the optimal traits to express polyphenically are close to, but not the same as, the best single trait in each environmental state alone. Similarly, the optimal frequency of expressing each trait is close, but not identical, to the frequency of the environmental states. This reflects the benefit of being somewhat conservative in trait values, to reduce the mismatch between trait and environment, and somewhat risk-taking in trait expression frequency, to capture the benefit of expressing the "right" trait in the more frequent environment.
format Artículo científico
id pubmed_40966643
institution PubMed
language en
publishDate 2025
publisher Evolution; international journal of organic evolution
record_format pubmed
spellingShingle Evolution of phenotypic polymorphism in symbiont-pairing in plant-fungal symbiosis.
Brown, Alexandra L
Proulx, Stephen R
Symbiosis
Mycorrhizae
Phenotype
Biological Evolution
Polymorphism, Genetic
Plants
Evolution of phenotypic polymorphism in symbiont-pairing in plant-fungal symbiosis. Brown, Alexandra L Proulx, Stephen R Symbiosis Mycorrhizae Phenotype Biological Evolution Polymorphism, Genetic Plants Temporal environmental variation presents a challenge to organisms because the optimal phenotype may vary with time. This is particularly problematic for populations in spatially uniform environments, because spatial variation is generally required to maintain genotypic polymorphism. One solution is to produce offspring that share a genotype but have developmental randomness that causes them to vary in phenotype-i.e., to be phenotypically polymorphic. This is known as adaptive coin-flipping or (in some cases) diversifying bet-hedging. Here, we investigate how the environment and trait expression affect the initial evolution of polyphenism, as well as the optimal polyphenic traits and frequency of trait expression. We focus on the case of plants allocating resources to mycorrhizal partners. We find that the optimal traits to express polyphenically are close to, but not the same as, the best single trait in each environmental state alone. Similarly, the optimal frequency of expressing each trait is close, but not identical, to the frequency of the environmental states. This reflects the benefit of being somewhat conservative in trait values, to reduce the mismatch between trait and environment, and somewhat risk-taking in trait expression frequency, to capture the benefit of expressing the "right" trait in the more frequent environment.
title Evolution of phenotypic polymorphism in symbiont-pairing in plant-fungal symbiosis.
topic Symbiosis
Mycorrhizae
Phenotype
Biological Evolution
Polymorphism, Genetic
Plants
url https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40966643/