Estimating the capacity of Chamaecrista fasciculata for adaptation to change in precipitation.

Adaptation through natural selection may be the only means by which small and fragmented plant populations will persist through present day environmental change. A population's additive genetic variance for fitness (V (W)) represents its immediate capacity to adapt to the environment in which it exists. We evaluated this property for a population of the annual legume Chamaecrista fasciculata through a quantitative genetic experiment in the tallgrass prairie region of the Midwestern United States, where changing climate is predicted to include more variability in rainfall.