Emergence of a floral colour polymorphism by pollinator-mediated overdominance

Autor(en)

Roman T. Kellenberger, Kelsey J. R. P. Byers, Rita M. De Brito Francisco, Yannick M. Staedler, Amy M. LaFountain, Jürg Schönenberger, Florian P. Schiestl, Philipp M. Schlüter

Abstrakt

Maintenance of polymorphism by overdominance (heterozygote advantage) is a fundamental concept in evolutionary biology. In most examples known in nature, overdominance is a result of homozygotes suffering from deleterious effects. Here we show that overdominance maintains a non-deleterious polymorphism with black, red and white floral morphs in the Alpine orchid Gymnadenia rhellicani. Phenotypic, metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses reveal that the morphs differ solely in cyanidin pigments, which are linked to differential expression of an anthocyanidin synthase (ANS) gene. This expression difference is caused by a premature stop codon in an ANS-regulating R2R3-MYB transcription factor, which is heterozygous in the red colour morph. Furthermore, field observations show that bee and fly pollinators have opposite colour preferences; this results in higher fitness (seed set) of the heterozygous morph without deleterious effects in either homozygous morph. Together, these findings demonstrate that genuine overdominance exists in nature.

Organisation(en)

Department für Botanik und Biodiversitätsforschung

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Zürich (UZH), University of Connecticut, Universität Hohenheim

Journal

Nature Communications

Band

10

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

2041-1723

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07936-x

Publikationsdatum

2019

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

106008 Botanik, 106012 Evolutionsforschung, 106042 Systematische Botanik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Allgemeine Physik und Astronomie, Allgemeine Chemie, Allgemeine Biochemie, Genetik und Molekularbiologie

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/765e4342-23f0-4958-848f-c0581cc38d3f