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QUANTITATIVE GENETICS OF SEQUENTIAL LIFE‐HISTORY AND JUVENILE TRAITS IN THE PARTIALLY SELFING PERENNIAL, AQUILEGIA CAERULEA
Author(s) -
Montalvo Arlee M.,
Shaw Ruth G.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1994.tb01365.x
Subject(s) - biology , inbreeding depression , heritability , selfing , diallel cross , maternal effect , quantitative genetics , juvenile , inbreeding , population , outbreeding depression , botany , ecology , genetic variation , evolutionary biology , demography , hybrid , genetics , offspring , pregnancy , sociology , gene
We determined the genetic basis of several traits related to overall fitness of Aquilegia caerulea , a perennial herb of the Rocky Mountains in western North America. To obtain measures of heritability relevant to the evolutionary potential of wild populations, we performed full and partial diallel crosses and studied progeny performance in the field. Based on a joint analysis of two designs with a total of 18 parents and 102 crosses, we detected significant maternal variance for seed mass and emergence time, but this component was negligible for later‐expressed traits. Low heritability and evidence that maternal effects on seed mass are largely environmental suggest that in this population there is little evolutionary potential for change in seed mass under conditions experienced during the study. Seed mass varied depending on particular combinations of parents and cross direction. Such an interaction can have several different biological interpretations, including that particular maternal parents selectively provision embryos sired by particular pollen genotypes. Width of the first true leaf after 4 wk of growth and leaf size of juvenile plants at years one and two were significantly heritable and positively genetically correlated. Juvenile survival exhibited significant dominance variance, as expected from evidence of inbreeding depression in this trait. In contrast, for other traits that exhibit inbreeding depression in this population (seed mass and third‐year leaf size), dominance variance was negligible.