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Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity

Organisms live in heterogeneous environments, so strategies that maximze fitness in such environments will evolve. Variation in traits is important because it is the raw material on which natural selection acts during evolution. Phenotypic variation is usually thought to be due to genetic variation...

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Autores principales: Diaz, S Anaid, Viney, Mark
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25360248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1057
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author Diaz, S Anaid
Viney, Mark
author_facet Diaz, S Anaid
Viney, Mark
author_sort Diaz, S Anaid
collection PubMed
description Organisms live in heterogeneous environments, so strategies that maximze fitness in such environments will evolve. Variation in traits is important because it is the raw material on which natural selection acts during evolution. Phenotypic variation is usually thought to be due to genetic variation and/or environmentally induced effects. Therefore, genetically identical individuals in a constant environment should have invariant traits. Clearly, genetically identical individuals do differ phenotypically, usually thought to be due to stochastic processes. It is now becoming clear, especially from studies of unicellular species, that phenotypic variance among genetically identical individuals in a constant environment can be genetically controlled and that therefore, in principle, this can be subject to selection. However, there has been little investigation of these phenomena in multicellular species. Here, we have studied the mean lifetime fecundity (thus a trait likely to be relevant to reproductive success), and variance in lifetime fecundity, in recently-wild isolates of the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We found that these genotypes differed in their variance in lifetime fecundity: some had high variance in fecundity, others very low variance. We find that this variance in lifetime fecundity was negatively related to the mean lifetime fecundity of the lines, and that the variance of the lines was positively correlated between environments. We suggest that the variance in lifetime fecundity may be a bet-hedging strategy used by this species.
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spelling pubmed-42014212014-10-30 Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity Diaz, S Anaid Viney, Mark Ecol Evol Original Research Organisms live in heterogeneous environments, so strategies that maximze fitness in such environments will evolve. Variation in traits is important because it is the raw material on which natural selection acts during evolution. Phenotypic variation is usually thought to be due to genetic variation and/or environmentally induced effects. Therefore, genetically identical individuals in a constant environment should have invariant traits. Clearly, genetically identical individuals do differ phenotypically, usually thought to be due to stochastic processes. It is now becoming clear, especially from studies of unicellular species, that phenotypic variance among genetically identical individuals in a constant environment can be genetically controlled and that therefore, in principle, this can be subject to selection. However, there has been little investigation of these phenomena in multicellular species. Here, we have studied the mean lifetime fecundity (thus a trait likely to be relevant to reproductive success), and variance in lifetime fecundity, in recently-wild isolates of the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We found that these genotypes differed in their variance in lifetime fecundity: some had high variance in fecundity, others very low variance. We find that this variance in lifetime fecundity was negatively related to the mean lifetime fecundity of the lines, and that the variance of the lines was positively correlated between environments. We suggest that the variance in lifetime fecundity may be a bet-hedging strategy used by this species. Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2014-06 2014-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4201421/ /pubmed/25360248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1057 Text en © 2014 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 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.
spellingShingle Original Research
Diaz, S Anaid
Viney, Mark
Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity
title Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity
title_full Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity
title_fullStr Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity
title_full_unstemmed Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity
title_short Genotypic-specific variance in Caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity
title_sort genotypic-specific variance in caenorhabditis elegans lifetime fecundity
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25360248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1057
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