REU: Ecological Consequences of Environmental Maternal Effects in Plantago lanceolata

最近，植物种群生物学家已经认识到母体效应在植物中的重要性，即通过正常染色体遗传以外的方式将性状从植物传递给种子后代。施密特和伍尔夫博士建议在普通草坪和牧场杂草的自然种群中调查一种母性效应，即植物环境对其后代相对成功的影响。通过繁殖单个植物的克隆并将它们种植到不同的环境中，然后杂交并收集它们的种子，研究人员将能够确定父母环境如何影响种子大小和发芽率等后代特征，同时控制不同环境中父母的遗传背景。通过将这些种子后代种植回相同的实验地点，研究人员将能够确定父母的环境如何影响后代的成功。这项拟议的研究将对植物种群生物学领域做出若干贡献。首先，它将提供关于自然种群内部和之间的环境异质性产生的环境母体影响的大小的独特数据。其次，这将是第一次研究自然条件下环境母体效应对后代健康的影响。这一发现将对植物种群动态和种子人口统计学的研究以及理解自然种群内种子和幼苗性状的进化都具有重要意义。这项工作还将对应用植物生物学产生影响，因为车前草是一种常见的杂草，而且环境母体效应在许多作物物种中无疑是重要的。

Recently plant population biologists have recognized the importance of maternal effects in plants, that is, the transmission of traits from a plant to its seed offspring through means other than normal chromosomal inheritance. Drs. Schmitt and Wulff propose to investigate one such maternal effect, the effect of a plant's environment on the relative success of its offspring, in natural populations of the common lawn and pasture weed, >Plantago>>> >lanceolata> (ribwort plantain). By propagating clones of individual plants and planting them into different environments, then crossing them and collecting their seeds, the investigators will be able to determine how parental environment affects offspring traits such as seed size and germination rate, while controlling the genetic background of the parent across environments. By planting these seed progeny back into the same experimental sites, the investigators will be able to determine how parental environment affects offspring success. The proposed research will make several contributions to the field of plant population biology. First, it will provide unique data on the magnitude of environmental maternal effects generated by environmental heterogeneity within and between natural populations. Second, this will be the first study to investigate the impact of environmental maternal effects on offspring fitness under natural conditions. The findings will be important both for studies of plant population dynamics and seed demography and for understanding the evolution of seed and seedling traits within natural populations. This work will also have implications for applied plant biology because >Plantago> >lanceolata> is a common weed and because environmental maternal effects are undoubtedly important in many crop species.