Publication Date:
2009-01-20
Description:
Like many species, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana exhibits multiple different life histories in natural environments. We grew mutants impaired in different signaling pathways in field experiments across the species' native European range in order to dissect the mechanisms underlying this variation. Unexpectedly, mutational loss at loci implicated in the cold requirement for flowering had little effect on life history except in late-summer cohorts. A genetically informed photothermal model of progression toward flowering explained most of the observed variation and predicted an abrupt transition from autumn flowering to spring flowering in late-summer germinants. Environmental signals control the timing of this transition, creating a critical window of acute sensitivity to genetic and climatic change that may be common for seasonally regulated life history traits.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Wilczek, Amity M -- Roe, Judith L -- Knapp, Mary C -- Cooper, Martha D -- Lopez-Gallego, Cristina -- Martin, Laura J -- Muir, Christopher D -- Sim, Sheina -- Walker, Alexis -- Anderson, Jillian -- Egan, J Franklin -- Moyers, Brook T -- Petipas, Renee -- Giakountis, Antonis -- Charbit, Erika -- Coupland, George -- Welch, Stephen M -- Schmitt, Johanna -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Feb 13;323(5916):930-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1165826. Epub 2009 Jan 15.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19150810" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Adaptation, Physiological
;
Arabidopsis/*genetics/*growth & development
;
Environment
;
Flowers/growth & development
;
Mutation
;
Photoperiod
;
Seasons
;
Signal Transduction
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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