Ecological differentiation and adaptation are processes that can drive divergence and speciation. Measuring ecologically revenant traits can help to identify possible targets of natural selection that may have mediated ecological differentiation. This study looked for evidence of within and between species differentiation in seven ecologically relevant traits in two closely related species sampled across their range, and whether any of these traits were related to climate differences among site of origin. We measured seven traits under common garden conditions in seedlings of Silene dioica (11 populations, n=528) and Silene latifolia (14 populations, n=672) grown in the botanical garden in Uppsala in a randomised block design. Three traits related to leaf morphology were measured, and four related to water usage of the plant were measured. These traits were analysed for differences between the species as well as for differences within each species between populations using a linear mixed model. The traits’ relationship to a climate variable, derived from the axes of a principal components analysis of climate data for each site, was investigated using a linear model. A number of drought avoidance (e.g. succulence, max turgid weight) and morphological traits (e.g. leaf ratio) differed between the two species. Water use efficiency has been flagged before as possibly driving ecological differentiation between the two species and the results identify possible candidate traits for quantifying this separation. Differentiation between populations within each species was also present in two traits within S. latifolia and in four traits within S. dioica significantly varying between the populations. This could reflect either local adaptation or genetic drift acting on populations across the range. One trait related to the amount of water taken up by the leaf (wgain) was found to be significantly associated with the climate variable, which was extracted from the principal components analysis, in S. latifolia. The results identified a number of candidate traits which could reflect ecological differences between the species especially with respect to water relations. These traits may allow the species to respond differently during periods of water stress, which in turn could result in ecological separation of the species and determine their geographical ranges.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-332293 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Connaghan, Daniel |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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