Publication Date:
2012-10-09
Description:
Plants defend themselves against attack by natural enemies, and these defenses vary widely across populations. However, whether communities of natural enemies are a sufficiently potent force to maintain polymorphisms in defensive traits is largely unknown. Here, we exploit the genetic resources of Arabidopsis thaliana, coupled with 39 years of field data on aphid abundance, to (i) demonstrate that geographic patterns in a polymorphic defense locus (GS-ELONG) are strongly correlated with changes in the relative abundance of two specialist aphids; and (ii) demonstrate differential selection by the two aphids on GS-ELONG, using a multigeneration selection experiment. We thereby show a causal link between variation in abundance of the two specialist aphids and the geographic pattern at GS-ELONG, which highlights the potency of natural enemies as selective forces.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Zust, Tobias -- Heichinger, Christian -- Grossniklaus, Ueli -- Harrington, Richard -- Kliebenstein, Daniel J -- Turnbull, Lindsay A -- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Oct 5;338(6103):116-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1226397.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, Zurich CH-8057, Switzerland. tobias.zuest@cornell.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23042895" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Adaptation, Biological/*genetics
;
Animals
;
Aphids/*physiology
;
Arabidopsis/*genetics
;
*Genetic Loci
;
Geography
;
Herbivory/*physiology
;
Polymorphism, Genetic
;
*Selection, Genetic
;
Species Specificity
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
