10.5061/DRYAD.2SP38
Scholes, Daniel R.
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Paige, Ken N.
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Data from: Plasticity in ploidy underlies plant fitness compensation to
herbivore damage
Dryad
dataset
2014
Arabidopsis thaliana
Predator Prey Interactions
Species interactions
2014-08-21T13:40:23Z
2014-08-21T13:40:23Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.12894
48302 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
How plants mitigate damage by animal herbivores is a fundamental
ecological and evolutionary question of plant-animal interactions. Some
plants can increase their fitness when damaged in a phenomenon termed
“overcompensation.” Despite overcompensation being observed in a variety
of plant species, its mechanistic basis remains elusive. Recent research
has shown that the Arabidopsis thaliana genotype Columbia-4 employs
endoreduplication, the replication of the genome without mitosis,
following damage and that it overcompensates for seed yield. The related
genotype Landsberg erecta, in contrast, does not increase its
endoreduplication following damage and suffers reduced seed yield. While
these results suggest that a plant's ability to plastically increase
its ploidy during regrowth may promote its mitigation of damage, no
studies have explicitly linked the endoreduplication genetic pathway to
the regrowth and fitness of damaged plants. By comparing fitness and
ploidy between undamaged and damaged plants of Columbia-4, Landsberg
erecta, and their offspring, we provide evidence that endoreduplication is
directly involved in compensatory performance. We then overexpressed an
endoreduplication regulator and compared this mutant's
endoreduplication and compensation with its background genotype
Columbia-0, an undercompensator. Enhancing Columbia-0's ability to
endoreduplicate during regrowth led to the complete mitigation of the
otherwise detrimental effects of damage on its fitness. These results
suggest that the ability of these plants to increase their ploidy via
endoreduplication directly impacts their abilities to compensate for
damage, providing a novel mechanism by which some plants can mitigate or
even benefit from apical damage with potential across the wide range of
plant taxa that endoreduplicate.
Fitness and cycle value dataFitness and cycle value dataData.xlsx