Local adaptation of natural population of Arabidopsis arenosa to serpentine soil

Abstract

Arabidopsis arenosa represents a promising model for studying the mechanisms underlying the adaptation to serpentine soil. Genetic basis of serpentine adaptation is still poorly known and A. arenosa possesses many advantages as a tool to complete that knowledge. The first step of this study was to reveal the presence of a local adaptation to serpentine soil in a population of A. arenosa. To do so, I used the data from a reciprocal transplant experiment realized between a Czech pair of serpentine - non-serpentine populations and I explored the phenotypes associated with the adaptation. Subsequently, I produced the F2 hybrids coming from crosses between serpentine - non-serpentine parents and I studied the expression of fitness traits in F2 plants growing in serpentine in order to estimate the number of loci underlying the adaptation which I compared with other studies. I confirmed the presence of a local adaptation, with the population of serpentine origin performing better than the non-serpentine population in the serpentine substrate of origin, associated with accumulation of heavy metals in the leaves. Analyses of the soil composition revealed differences in heavy metals and nutrients contents, Ca/Mg ratio and pH between the two localities. Those results fitted with the function of the candidate...