The effects of ploidy and mating system on the evolvability of populations: theoretical and empirical investigations

作者：Carlos Olmedo‐Castellanos, Diane Douet, Camilo Ferrón, Ana García‐Muñoz, A. Jesús Muñoz‐Pajares, Mohamed Abdelaziz, Josselin Clo · 发表于：bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1101/2025.07.17.665335 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Plant Reproductive Biology、Genetic diversity and population structure、Chromosomal and Genetic Variations

Abstract The amount of genetic diversity is a key parameter to understand the adaptive potential of populations. It has been demonstrated both theoretically and empirically that several factors influence genetic variance. In angiosperms, two of those are the ploidy level and the mating system of the populations. Polyploidy is theoretically known to increase adaptive potential in the long term. Self-fertilization has been theoretically associated with a decrease in genetic variance, even if it lacks empirical support. These factors have been studied independently, but are often shared in plants. However, there is a lack of empirical studies about the joint effects of polyploidy and selfing on genetic variance. In this paper, we conducted theoretical simulations to explore how genetic diversity could be affected by the ploidy level and mating system. We compared the simulation results with empirical estimates of genetic variance from the plant species Erysimum incanum , a selfing species from the Western Mediterranean basin exhibiting three different ploidy levels. We measured a series of phenotypic traits in individuals of each ploidy, obtained by controlled crosses and grown in different climatic conditions. While theoretical approaches showed a positive relationship between ploidy and genetic variance in both the short and long term, empirical results show lower evolvability and transgressive segregation for polyploids, both results being dependent on environmental condition...