Genetic trade-offs quietly limit how fast a weed can adapt
Bishop SGD, Stinchcombe JR, Baucom RS
Climate Adaptation
The weedy morning glory vining through fences and overgrown gardens shows that even fast-evolving plants can get boxed in by genetic trade-offs, which is a warning sign for how crops and natives will cope with shifting seasons.
Scientists compared seeds of the common morning glory collected decades apart and grew them side by side, a trick called a resurrection experiment. They found that traits attracting pollinators, like flower shape and color, changed fast over less than ten years. But flowering time, the trait that determines whether a plant blooms in sync with the right season, barely budged because its genes are linked to those pollinator traits, creating an invisible tug-of-war that slows adaptation.
Key Findings
Pollinator-attracting traits in Ipomoea purpurea evolved or shifted in favorability within a timescale of under 10 years
Genetic covariances (correlations) between pollination and mating-system traits constrained the evolutionary rate and trajectory of flowering phenology
Flowering phenology, despite strong selective importance for climate adaptation, showed reduced adaptive potential due to these genetic constraints rather than lack of selection pressure
chevron_right Technical Summary
A decade-long study of the common morning glory weed found that flashy traits attracting pollinators evolved quickly, but flowering time, a trait crucial for adapting to climate shifts, got stuck because its genes are tangled up with those pollinator traits. The finding shows that even fast-tracked evolution can be limited by hidden genetic trade-offs.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
A resurrection experiment reveals reduced adaptive potential in a common agricultural weed.
Adaptive evolution is critical to population responses under accelerating anthropogenic global change. Although theory and some empirical work suggest that contemporary rates of environmental chang...
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Ipomoea purpurea, the common morning-glory, tall morning-glory, or purple morning glory, is a species in the genus Ipomoea.