Additive genetic variance for traits least related to fitness increases with environmental stress in the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria
2021
Chapuis, Marie-Pierre | Pélissié, Benjamin | Piou, Cyril | Chardonnet, Floriane | Pages, Christine | Foucart, Antoine | Chapuis, Elodie | Jourdan‐pineau, Hélène | Centre de Biologie pour la Gestion des Populations (UMR CBGP) ; Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD [Occitanie])-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Institut Agro - Montpellier SupAgro ; Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro) | Département Systèmes Biologiques (Cirad-BIOS) ; Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad) | University of Nebraska [Kearney] (UNK) | Plant Health Institute of Montpellier (UMR PHIM) ; Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Institut Agro - Montpellier SupAgro ; Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro) | Maladies infectieuses et vecteurs : écologie, génétique, évolution et contrôle (MIVEGEC) ; Université de Montpellier (UM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD [Occitanie]) | Peuplements végétaux et bioagresseurs en milieu tropical (UMR PVBMT) ; Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Université de La Réunion (UR)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE) | This work was supported by research funds from the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and the project ANR-18-CE32-0010 (PEPPER). The authors acknowledge the South Green Platform for providing computational resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. | South Green Platform | ANR-18-CE32-0010,PEPPER,Etude de l'émergence du polyphénisme de phase et des risques associés(2018)
International audience
Show more [+] Less [-]English. Under environmental stress, previously hidden additive genetic variation can be unmasked and exposed to selection. The amount of hidden variation is expected to be higher for life history traits, which strongly correlate to individual fitness, than for morphological traits, in which fitness effects are more ambiguous. However, no consensual pattern has been recovered yet, and this idea is still debated in the literature. Here, we hypothesize that the classical categorization of traits (i.e., life history and morphology) may fail to capture their proximity to fitness. In the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, a model organism for the study of insect polyphenism, we quantified changes in additive genetic variation elicited by lifetime thermal stress for ten traits, in which evolutionary significance is known. Irrespective of their category, traits under strong stabilizing selection showed genetic invariance with environmental stress, while traits more loosely associated with fitness showed a marked increase in additive genetic variation in the stressful environment. Furthermore, traits involved in adaptive phenotypic plasticity (growth compensation) showed either no change in additive genetic variance or a change of moderate magnitude across thermal environments. We interpret this mitigated response of plastic traits in the context of integrated evolution to adjust the entire phenotype in heterogeneous environments (i.e., adaptiveness of initial plasticity, compromise of phenotypic compensation with stress, and shared developmental pathway). Altogether, our results indicate, in agreement with theoretical expectations, that environmental stress can increase available additive genetic variance in some desert locust traits, but those closely linked to fitness are largely unaffected. Our study also highlights the importance of assessing the proximity to fitness of a trait on a case-by-case basis and in an ecologically relevant context, as well as considering the processes of canalization and plasticity, involved in the control of phenotypic variation.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Institut national de la recherche agronomique