Dataset Information

Increased susceptibility to fungal disease accompanies adaptation to drought in Brassica rapa.

ABSTRACT: Recent studies have demonstrated adaptive evolutionary responses to climate change, but little is known about how these responses may influence ecological interactions with other organisms, including natural enemies. We used a resurrection experiment in the greenhouse to examine the effect of evolutionary responses to drought on the susceptibility of Brassica rapa plants to a fungal pathogen, Alternaria brassicae. In agreement with previous studies in this population, we found an evolutionary shift to earlier flowering postdrought, which was previously shown to be adaptive. Here, we report the novel finding that postdrought descendant plants were also more susceptible to disease, indicating a rapid evolutionary shift to increased susceptibility. This was accompanied by an evolutionary shift to increased specific leaf area (thinner leaves) following drought. We found that flowering time and disease susceptibility displayed plastic responses to experimental drought treatments, but that this plasticity did not match the direction of evolution, indicating that plastic and evolutionary responses to changes in climate can be opposed. The observed evolutionary shift to increased disease susceptibility accompanying adaptation to drought provides evidence that even if populations can rapidly adapt in response to climate change, evolution in other traits may have ecological effects that could make species more vulnerable.

SUBMITTER: O'Hara NB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4715916 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Increased susceptibility to fungal disease accompanies adaptation to drought in Brassica rapa.

O'Hara Niamh B NB Rest Joshua S JS Franks Steven J SJ

Evolution; international journal of organic evolution 20151224 1

Recent studies have demonstrated adaptive evolutionary responses to climate change, but little is known about how these responses may influence ecological interactions with other organisms, including natural enemies. We used a resurrection experiment in the greenhouse to examine the effect of evolutionary responses to drought on the susceptibility of Brassica rapa plants to a fungal pathogen, Alternaria brassicae. In agreement with previous studies in this population, we found an evolutionary sh ...[more]

PMID: 26648585

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Project description:BackgroundPathogens are key components in natural and agricultural plant systems. There is evidence of evolutionary changes in disease susceptibility as a consequence of climate change, but we know little about the underlying genetic basis of this evolution. To address this, we took advantage of a historical seed collection of a Brassica rapa population, which we previously demonstrated evolved an increase in disease susceptibility to a necrotrophic fungal pathogen following a drought.ResultsPreviously, we combined a resurrection experiment with genome-wide sequencing of 124 pooled ancestral and descendant plants. Here, using these previously generated sequence data (Franks et al. in Mol Ecol 25(15):3622-3631, 2016), we show that well-characterized necrotrophic fungal pathogen response (NFPR) genes have evolved, as indicated by changes in allele frequency, between ancestors and descendants, with several of them identified as extreme FST outliers. The jasmonic acid (JA) signaling pathway in particular seems to underlie the evolution of disease susceptibility, in addition to its well characterized role in plastic disease response. We identify a list of 260 genes that are both NFPR genes and are differentially expressed in response to drought, based on publicly available data. We present evidence that five of these genes evolved between ancestors and descendants, suggesting that the drought acted as the evolutionary driver, and that the accompanying increase in disease susceptibility may have been a consequence of genetic pleiotropy.ConclusionsOur study provides evidence that for this population, standing variation in NFPR genes is affected by natural selection related to climate change. Our results reveal potentially important candidates that may underlie trait evolution in both crops and natural systems. Additionally, this trade-off between adaptation to biotic and abiotic stresses is an example of how climate change can have diverse and unexpected consequences.

Dataset Information

Increased susceptibility to fungal disease accompanies adaptation to drought in Brassica rapa.

Publications

Increased susceptibility to fungal disease accompanies adaptation to drought in Brassica rapa.

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