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On the importance of balancing selection in plants

On the importance of balancing selection in plants 45 I. 46 II. 46 III. 47 IV. 48 V. 50 VI. 52 VII. 53 VIII. 54 54 References 54 Summary Balancing selection refers to a variety of selective regimes that maintain advantageous genetic diversity within populations. We review the history of the ideas regarding the types of selection that maintain such polymorphism in flowering plants, notably heterozygote advantage, negative frequency‐dependent selection, and spatial heterogeneity. One shared feature of these mechanisms is that whether an allele is beneficial or detrimental is conditional on its frequency in the population. We highlight examples of balancing selection on a variety of discrete traits. These include the well‐referenced case of self‐incompatibility and recent evidence from species with nuclear‐cytoplasmic gynodioecy, both of which exhibit trans‐specific polymorphism, a hallmark of balancing selection. We also discuss and give examples of how spatial heterogeneity in particular, which is often thought unlikely to allow protected polymorphism, can maintain genetic variation in plants (which are rooted in place) as a result of microhabitat selection. Lastly, we discuss limitations of the protected polymorphism concept for quantitative traits, where selection can inflate the genetic variance without maintaining specific alleles indefinitely. We conclude that while discrete‐morph variation provides the most unambiguous cases of protected polymorphism, they represent only a fraction of the balancing selection at work in plants. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png New Phytologist Wiley

On the importance of balancing selection in plants

Delph, Lynda F.; Kelly, John K.
New Phytologist , Volume 201 (1) – Jan 1, 2014
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References (122)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 New Phytologist Trust
ISSN
0028-646X
eISSN
1469-8137
DOI
10.1111/nph.12441
pmid
23952298
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

45 I. 46 II. 46 III. 47 IV. 48 V. 50 VI. 52 VII. 53 VIII. 54 54 References 54 Summary Balancing selection refers to a variety of selective regimes that maintain advantageous genetic diversity within populations. We review the history of the ideas regarding the types of selection that maintain such polymorphism in flowering plants, notably heterozygote advantage, negative frequency‐dependent selection, and spatial heterogeneity. One shared feature of these mechanisms is that whether an allele is beneficial or detrimental is conditional on its frequency in the population. We highlight examples of balancing selection on a variety of discrete traits. These include the well‐referenced case of self‐incompatibility and recent evidence from species with nuclear‐cytoplasmic gynodioecy, both of which exhibit trans‐specific polymorphism, a hallmark of balancing selection. We also discuss and give examples of how spatial heterogeneity in particular, which is often thought unlikely to allow protected polymorphism, can maintain genetic variation in plants (which are rooted in place) as a result of microhabitat selection. Lastly, we discuss limitations of the protected polymorphism concept for quantitative traits, where selection can inflate the genetic variance without maintaining specific alleles indefinitely. We conclude that while discrete‐morph variation provides the most unambiguous cases of protected polymorphism, they represent only a fraction of the balancing selection at work in plants.

Journal

New Phytologist – Wiley

Published: Jan 1, 2014

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