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Published August 28, 2025 | Version v1
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Data from: Evolutionary responses to historic drought across the range of scarlet monkeyflower

Authors/Creators

  • 1. North Carolina State University
  • 2. University of California, Merced
  • 3. University of Oregon
  • 4. San Diego State University
  • 5. University of Wisconsin–Madison

Description

Adaptive evolution is a key means for populations to persist under environmental change, yet whether populations across a species' range can adapt quickly enough to keep pace with climate change remains unknown. The breeder's equation predicts the evolutionary change in a trait from one generation to the next as the product of the selection differential and the narrow-sense heritability in that trait. Incorporating these aspects of the breeder's equation, we performed a resurrection study with the scarlet monkeyflower (Mimulus cardinalis) to evaluate whether traits associated with drought adaptation have evolved in populations across a species' range in response to extreme drought. We compared trait and fitness differences of pre-drought ancestors and post-drought descendants from six populations transplanted into three latitudinally-arrayed common gardens and quantified phenotypic selection and trait heritabilities. The strength, direction, and mode of selection varied among traits and gardens. Trait heritabilities were relatively low and did not differ dramatically among populations or gardens. Overall, instances of evolutionary responses between ancestors and descendants were few and small in magnitude, but the magnitude of these evolutionary differences varied among gardens. Together, these results suggest that the expression of genetic variation, and thus traits, depends on the environment, and that environmental variability in field settings may mask the genetic variation that is often detected in greenhouse environments. 

Notes

Funding provided by: U.S. National Science Foundation
ROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62
Award Number: 2131815

Funding provided by: United States Department of Agriculture
ROR ID: https://ror.org/01na82s61
Award Number: 7002993

Funding provided by: U.S. National Science Foundation
ROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62
Award Number: 2131816

Funding provided by: U.S. National Science Foundation
ROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62
Award Number: 2131817

Funding provided by: U.S. National Science Foundation
ROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62
Award Number: 2131818

Funding provided by: U.S. National Science Foundation
ROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62
Award Number: 2131819

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Additional details

Related works

Is source of
10.5061/dryad.18931zd7g (DOI)