Publications by authors named "Ava Garrison"
Article Synopsis
- Phenotypic plasticity can adjust important traits in organisms that aid in their establishment in new environments before they undergo genetic adaptation.
- In a study on Raphanus raphanistrum (a problematic weed), researchers compared weedy populations to non-weedy native populations to explore how plasticity helps in colonizing agricultural fields.
- The findings revealed that many traits were both plastic and genetically different between the weedy and native populations, indicating that plasticity may have facilitated the colonization and adaptation of radish plants in new agricultural settings.
Traits that have lost function sometimes persist through evolutionary time. These traits may persist if there is not enough standing genetic variation for the trait to allow a response to selection, if selection against the trait is weak relative to drift, or if the trait has a residual function. To determine the evolutionary processes shaping whether nonfunctional traits are retained or lost, we investigated short stamens in 16 populations of along an elevational cline in northeast Spain.
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