Inbreeding in a dioecious plant has sex- and population origin-specific effects on its interactions with pollinators
- Kiel University, Germany
- Bielefeld University, Germany
Abstract
We study the effects of inbreeding in a dioecious plant on its interaction with pollinating insects and test whether the magnitude of such effects is shaped by plant individual sex and the evolutionary histories of plant populations. We recorded spatial, scent, colour and rewarding flower traits as well as pollinator visitation rates in experimentally inbred and outbred, male and female Silene latifolia plants from European and North American populations differing in their evolutionary histories. We found that inbreeding specifically impairs spatial flower traits and floral scent. Our results support that sex-specific selection and gene expression may have partially magnified these inbreeding costs for females, and that divergent evolutionary histories altered the genetic architecture underlying inbreeding effects across population origins. Moreover, the results indicate that inbreeding effects on floral scent may have a huge potential to disrupt interactions among plants and nocturnal moth pollinators, which are mediated by elaborate chemical communication.
Data availability
All datasets and analyses supporting this article have been deposited to Dryad, under the DOI 10.5061/dryad.612jm643d
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Data: Inbreeding in a dioecious plant has sex- and population origin-specific effects on its interactions with pollinatorsDryad Digital Repository, 10.5061/dryad.612jm643d.
Article and author information
Author details
Alexandra Erfmeier
Funding
Kiel University, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, program for promotion of young female scientists
- Karin Schrieber
- Alexandra Erfmeier
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2021, Schrieber et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Inbreeding in a dioecious plant has sex- and population origin-specific effects on its interactions with pollinators
eLife 10:e65610.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65610
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