KinCoop · Do plants cooperate in reproduction? The effect of sharing pollination services on plant reproductive strategies
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2015-08-01 → 2018-07-31
- EU contribution
- €272,480
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-GF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Do plants cooperate in reproduction? The effect of sharing pollination services on plant reproductive strategies
KinCoop studied how plants behave in a social context in terms of their reproductive strategies. Plants can facilitate pollination of their neighbours. I hypothesized that this process of sharing pollination services will influence plant reproduction, driving cooperative reproductive strategies. KinCoop’s main goal was, thus, to test whether natural selection may favour social behaviours (from selfish to cooperative ones) in plant reproduction by assessing how different social environments, in terms of density and genetic relatedness of neighbours, might influence optimal allocation strategies through the effect of sharing pollinators and the effect this will have on mating patterns and plant fitness. The development of KinCoop has yielded significant results that will impact on the European Research Area and attitudes of European Society. Namely, the results of KinCoop showed the first evidence that plants recognize kin, modifying consequently their flowering strategies, broadening thus, the vision of how plants reproduce. Therefore, the plant social context may have deep consequences for plant phenotypes but also for plant performance and fitness. Future research should then consider social selection theory into the research agenda of plant populations. All expected milestones have been achieved and the major result obtained during this action has been published in the prestigious multidisciplinary journal: Nature Communication: Torices, R., J.M. Gómez, J.R. Pannell. 2018 Kin discrimination allows plants to modify investment towards pollinator attraction. Nature Communications 9, 2018 KinCoop tested important questions about social evolution in the context of reproductive strategies that have previously been surprisingly little studied in plants. KinCoop is contributing then to our understanding of how plants cooperate during reproduction to alter plant population dynamics, with potentially useful outcomes for plant conservation, weed control, and crop breeding.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Although social interactions in non-sentient beings such as plants might seem unlikely, there are good reasons to expect them to be important. Because plant populations are very often strongly genetically structured, with neighbouring plants frequently being relatives, their behaviour is expected to have been shaped by natural selection within this social context. Plants interact very strongly with their neighbours, and there is an increasing body of evidence showing kin recognition and cooperation with relatives, e.g., warning against herbivore attacks and reducing resource competition. However, little is known about how plants behave in a social context in terms of their reproductive strategies. This is surprising, because reproduction is a key life-history trait defining gene transfer, and thus is closely linked to fitness and to the evolutionary potential that will eventually determine the functioning and dynamics of plant populations and communities.Neighbouring plants commonly facilitate pollination. Therefore, the resources invested in floral attractive structures for one individual can positively impact individual fitness, but also the fitness of neighbours, increasing both individual and group benefits. Thus, natural selection should be expected to favour plastic adjustments of the resources allocated to pollinator attraction to the surrounding social environment. I will test this hypothesis, assessing how different social environments might influence optimal allocation strategies and the effect this will have on mating patterns and plant fitness. To address this objective, I will use an interdisciplinary approach that combines theoretical modelling and empirical testing, bringing tools from the sociological sciences to the study plant ecology and evolution. My project will contribute to our understanding of how plants cooperate during reproduction to alter plant population dynamics, with potentially useful outcomes for crop efficiency.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS · MadridCoordinatorSpain
- UNIVERSITE DE LAUSANNE · LAUSANNESwitzerland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union