Higher order polyploids exhibit enhanced desiccation tolerance in the grass Microchloa caffra
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Desiccation tolerance evolved recurrently across diverse plant lineages to enable survival in water-limited conditions. Many resurrection plants are polyploid, and several groups have hypothesized that polyploidy contributed to the evolution of desiccation tolerance. However, due to the vast phylogenetic distance between resurrection plant lineages, the rarity of desiccation tolerance, and the prevalence of polyploidy in plants, this hypothesis has been difficult to test. Here, we surveyed natural variation in morphological, reproductive, and desiccation tolerance traits across several cytotypes of a single species to test for links between polyploidy and increased resilience. We sampled multiple natural populations of the resurrection grass Microchloa caffra across an environmental gradient ranging from mesic to xeric in South Africa. We describe two distinct ecotypes of M. caffra that occupy different extremes of the environmental gradient and exhibit consistent differences in ploidy, morphological, reproductive, and desiccation tolerance traits in both field and common growth conditions. Interestingly, plants with more polyploid genomes exhibited consistently higher recovery from desiccation, were less reproductive, and were larger than plants with smaller genomes and lower ploidy. These data indicate that selective pressures in increasingly xeric sites may play a role in maintaining and increasing desiccation tolerance and are mediated by changes in ploidy.
Source: Journal of Experimental Botany
DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erae126
Authors: Rose A Marks, Paula Delgado, Givemore Munashe Makonya, Keren Cooper, Robert VanBuren, Jill M Farrant
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,418
Awards: BII: Life without water: protecting macromolecules, cells, and organisms during desiccation and rehydration across kingdoms of life, G4871221682, G4895866130, NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Leveraging Natural Variation to Understand Desiccation Tolerance in the Resurrection Plant Myrothamnus flabellifolia, The origin and genetic architecture of desiccation tolerance in C4 grasses
OpenAlex ID: W4393045484