EVOGENE / CEDE Seminar: Marc Stift - Inbreeding depression and the transition to selfing in North American Arabidopsis lyrata

Marc Stift from The Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Germany, will give the talk entitled "Inbreeding depression and the transition to selfing in North American Arabidopsis lyrata"

Abstract:

Plants have evolved a variety of mechanisms to promote outcrossing. These include floral adaptations that help avoid self-pollination, and molecular self-incompatibility systems that prevent fertilisation of ovules by self-pollen. Self-incompatibility is widespread across the plant kingdom, but transitions to self-compatibility and higher selfing rates are frequent.

Transitions to selfing are only thought to be possible under ecological scenarios where the inherent transmission advantage of selfers is more important than inbreeding depression. In other words, one may expect selfing to evolve when inbreeding depression is relatively low, or under conditions where successful outcrossing is unlikely, for example if compatible cross-pollen is scarce.

We study inbreeding depression in the normally self-incompatible Arabidopsis lyrata, of which some North American populations have evolved high selfing rates. Our data show that both genome-wide deleterious load and load linked to S-alleles contribute to inbreeding depression in self-incompatible plants. Both outcrossing and selfing populations showed significant inbreeding depression, but our estimates were much lower than previously published estimates for the (exclusively outcrossing) European subspecies. This may help explain why selfing has repeatedly evolved in North America, but has not been found in the European subspecies.

 

Read more about Marc Stifts research here and about his research group at the University of Konstanz here

Published Oct. 25, 2017 3:14 PM - Last modified Nov. 14, 2017 9:26 AM