Stinson, Kristina A. and Brophy, Caroline and Connolly, John (2009) Catching up on global change: new ragweed genotypes emerge in elevated CO2 conditions. Ecosphere, 2 (46). ISSN 2150-8925

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Abstract

Resource uptake by neighboring plants can be an important driver of natural selection in a changing environment. As climate and resource conditions are altered, genotypes that dominate within mixed populations today may differ markedly from those in future landscapes. We tested whether and how the dominance of different genotypes of the allergenic plant, common ragweed, may change in response to projected atmospheric CO2 conditions. We grew twelve maternal lines in experimental stands at either ambient or twice‐ambient levels of CO2. We then constructed a model that combines classical quantitative genetics theory with a set of a priori predictions about the relative performance of genotypes in the two treatments. Our findings show a complete reversal in the genotypic size hierarchy of ragweed plants in response to projected atmospheric CO2 conditions. Genotypes that are competitively suppressed in size at ambient levels become dominant under experimental doubling of CO2. Subordinated plants, in turn, boost their reproductive allocation to that of dominants, shrinking the fitness gap among all genotypes in high CO2. Extending our model to a contextual analysis framework, we further show that natural selection on size is reduced at elevated CO2, because an individual's position within the size hierarchy becomes less important for reproduction than it is in ambient conditions. Our work points to potential future ecological and evolutionary changes in this widespread allergenic plant.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright: © 2011 Stinson et al. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Keywords:	allergenic plant; Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.; common ragweed; competition; contextual analysis; dominant; elevated CO 2; genotype; nonlinear mixed model; size hierarchy; subordinate;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Mathematics and Statistics
Item ID:	10141
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1890/ES10-00168.1
Depositing User:	Dr. Caroline Brophy
Date Deposited:	23 Oct 2018 14:23
Journal or Publication Title:	Ecosphere
Publisher:	Ecological Society of America
Refereed:	Yes
Funders:	U.S. National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, Ireland (EPA)
URI:	https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley....
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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