Chasing the fitness optimum: temporal variation in the genetic and environmental expression of life-history traits for a perennial plant.

Background And Aims: The ability of plants to track shifting fitness optima is crucial within the context of global change, where increasing environmental extremes may have dramatic consequences for life history, fitness, and ultimately population persistence. However, tracking changing conditions relies on the relationship between genetic and environmental variance, where selection may favour plasticity, the evolution of genetic differences, or both depending on the spatial and temporal scale of environmental heterogeneity.

Methods: Over three years, we compared the genetic and environmental components of phenological and life-history variation in a common environment for the spring perennial Geum triflorum.

The importance of quantitative trait differentiation in restoration: landscape heterogeneity and functional traits inform seed transfer guidelines.

For widely distributed species, understanding the scale over which genetic variation correlates to landscape structure and composition is critical. Particularly within the context of restoration, the evolution of genetic differences may impact success if seeds are maladapted to the restoration environment. In this study, we used to quantify the scale over which genetic differences for quantitative traits important to adaptation have evolved, comparing the proportion of variance attributed to broad regional- and local population-level effects.