• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Graduate Theses, Dissertations and Projects
    • Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • Graduate Theses, Dissertations and Projects
    • Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    PLASTICITY AND EVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL OF ALLIARIA PETIOLATA LIFE HISTORY AND LEAF CHEMISTRY TRAITS IN DIFFERENT COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Honor_Richard_D_202011_MSc.pdf (9.994Mb)
    Author
    Honor, Richie
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Alliaria petiolata is an invasive biennial herb in North America where it has detrimental impacts on flora and fauna. Allelopathy, the chemical inhibition of plant competitors, is one explanation for why A. petiolata is more successful in North America than in Eurasia, where it is native. There is strong laboratory evidence that A. petiolata is allelopathic, and recent evidence has suggested that natural selection acts on allelopathic compounds (i.e., allelochemicals). If selection is acting on allelochemicals, allelopathy should influence survival and reproduction; however, there is not strong evidence of this in field settings. To shed light on this discrepancy, I measured phenotypic selection, plasticity and heritability of putative allelochemicals and life history traits to determine if there is selection on allelochemicals, if allelochemicals can respond to selection, and if selection is due to a direct effect of allelopathy, or due to selection acting on a correlated trait. Using families from 23 A. petiolata populations, I measured glucosinolate, flavonoid and chlorophyll A expression in A. petiolata leaf tissue to estimate selection on these traits in inter- and intraspecific competition and without competition. A separate experiment was also conducted to test the effect of soil nutrients on glucosinolate, flavonoid and chlorophyll A plasticity using 3 different A. petiolata families. I found that A. petiolata exhibited strong plastic responses to both fertilizer application and competition, but most traits exhibited very low heritability. I also found that while selection appeared to act on glucosinolate expression during interspecific competition, there is more evidence to suggest that glucosinolate expression was under indirect selection due to direct selection acting on the correlated trait, chlorophyll A in response to light limitation. There was genetic variation for glucosinolate expression, but it was mostly manifested in the ratio of glucosinolate: chlorophyll A expression, therefore, the heritability of glucosinolate expression is likely to vary among environments and to be higher in nutrient-rich environments. These results highlight the need to account for plasticity and heritability and measure other important traits to account for indirect selection when assessing evolutionary potential.
    URI for this record
    http://hdl.handle.net/1974/28610
    Collections
    • Department of Biology Graduate Theses
    • Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations
    Request an alternative format
    If you require this document in an alternate, accessible format, please contact the Queen's Adaptive Technology Centre

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV
     

     

    Browse

    All of QSpaceCommunities & CollectionsPublished DatesAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypesThis CollectionPublished DatesAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypes

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage StatisticsView Google Analytics Statistics

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV