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Emergence of a floral colour polymorphism by pollinator-mediated overdominance

Kellenberger, Roman T; Byers, Kelsey J R P; De Brito Francisco, Rita M; Staedler, Yannick M; LaFountain, Amy M; Schönenberger, Jürg; Schiestl, Florian P; Schlüter, Philipp M (2019). Emergence of a floral colour polymorphism by pollinator-mediated overdominance. Nature Communications, 10:63.

Abstract

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.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:07 Faculty of Science > Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany
07 Faculty of Science > Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center
Dewey Decimal Classification:580 Plants (Botany)
Scopus Subject Areas:Physical Sciences > General Chemistry
Life Sciences > General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Physical Sciences > General Physics and Astronomy
Uncontrolled Keywords:General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, General Physics and Astronomy, General Chemistry
Language:English
Date:1 December 2019
Deposited On:11 Jan 2019 14:09
Last Modified:20 Oct 2024 01:38
Publisher:Nature Publishing Group
ISSN:2041-1723
OA Status:Gold
Free access at:Publisher DOI. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07936-x
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  • Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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