Life history, floral development, and mating system in Clarkia xantiana (Onagraceae): do floral and whole‐plant rates of development evolve independently?

Autogamously self‐fertilizing taxa have evolved from outcrossing progenitors at least 12 times in the annual wildflower genus, Clarkia (Onagraceae). In C. xantiana , individuals of the selfing subspecies (ssp. parviflora ) flower at an earlier age, produce successive flowers more rapidly, and produce flowers that complete their development more rapidly than their outcrossing counterparts (ssp. xantiana ). Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain the joint evolution of these whole‐plant and individual floral traits. The accelerated life cycle hypothesis proposes that selection favoring a short life cycle in environments with short growing seasons (such as those typically occupied by parviflora ) has independently favored genotypes with early reproduction, synchronous flower production, and rapidly developing, self‐fertilizing flowers. The correlated response to selection hypothesis similarly proposes that selection in environments with short growing seasons favors early reproduction, but that rapid floral development and increased selfing evolve as correlated responses to selection due to genetic linkage (or pleiotropy) affecting both whole‐plant and floral development. We conducted a greenhouse experiment using maternal families from two field populations of each subspecies to examine covariation between floral and whole‐plant traits within and among populations to seek support for either of these hypotheses. Our results are consistent with the accelerated life cycle hypothesis but not with the correlated response to selection hypothesis.