Dataset Information

Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia).

ABSTRACT: A full understanding of how cities shape adaptation requires characterizing genetically-based phenotypic and fitness differences between urban and rural populations under field conditions. We used a reciprocal transplant experiment with the native plant common ragweed, (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), and found that urban and rural populations have diverged in flowering time, a trait that strongly affects fitness. Although urban populations flowered earlier than rural populations, plants growing in urban field sites flowered later than plants in rural field sites. This counter-gradient variation is consistent adaptive divergence between urban and rural populations. Also consistent with local adaptation, both urban and rural genotypes experienced stronger net selection in the foreign than in the local habitat, but this pattern was not significant for male fitness. Despite the evidence for local adaptation, rural populations had higher lifetime fitness at all sites, suggesting that selection has been stronger or more uniform in rural than urban populations. We also found that inter-population differences in both flowering time and fitness tended to be greater among urban than rural populations, which is consistent with greater drift or spatial variation in selection within urban environments. In summary, our results are consistent with adaptive divergence of urban and rural populations, but also suggest there may be greater environmental heterogeneity in urban environments which also affects evolution in urban landscapes.

SUBMITTER: Gorton AJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6030533 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (<i>Ambrosia artemisiifolia</i>).

Gorton Amanda J AJ Moeller David A DA Tiffin Peter P

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20180627 1881

A full understanding of how cities shape adaptation requires characterizing genetically-based phenotypic and fitness differences between urban and rural populations under field conditions. We used a reciprocal transplant experiment with the native plant common ragweed, (<i>Ambrosia artemisiifolia</i>), and found that urban and rural populations have diverged in flowering time, a trait that strongly affects fitness. Although urban populations flowered earlier than rural populations, plants growin ...[more]

PMID: 30051853

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Project description:BackgroundAmbrosia artemisiifolia is a North American native that has become one of the most problematic invasive plants in Europe and Asia. We studied its worldwide population genetic structure, using both nuclear and chloroplast microsatellite markers and an unprecedented large population sampling. Our goals were (i) to identify the sources of the invasive populations; (ii) to assess whether all invasive populations were founded by multiple introductions, as previously found in France; (iii) to examine how the introductions have affected the amount and structure of genetic variation in Europe; (iv) to document how the colonization of Europe proceeded; (v) to check whether populations exhibit significant heterozygote deficiencies, as previously observed.Principal findingsWe found evidence for multiple introductions of A. artemisiifolia, within regions but also within populations in most parts of its invasive range, leading to high levels of diversity. In Europe, introductions probably stem from two different regions of the native area: populations established in Central Europe appear to have originated from eastern North America, and Eastern European populations from more western North America. This may result from differential commercial exchanges between these geographic regions. Our results indicate that the expansion in Europe mostly occurred through long-distance dispersal, explaining the absence of isolation by distance and the weak influence of geography on the genetic structure in this area in contrast to the native range. Last, we detected significant heterozygote deficiencies in most populations. This may be explained by partial selfing, biparental inbreeding and/or a Wahlund effect and further investigation is warranted.ConclusionsThis insight into the sources and pathways of common ragweed expansion may help to better understand its invasion success and provides baseline data for future studies on the evolutionary processes involved during range expansion in novel environments.

Dataset Information

Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia).

Publications

Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (<i>Ambrosia artemisiifolia</i>).

Similar Datasets

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