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. Populations were sourced from alvar habitats that exhibit extreme but predictable annual flood-desiccation cycles and prairie habitats that exhibit similar but less predictable variation in water availability. Key Results Heritability was generally higher for early life-history (emergence probability) relative to later life-history traits (total seed mass), indicating that traits associated with establishment are under stronger genetic control relative to later life-history fitness expressions, where plasticity may play a larger role. This pattern was particularly notable in seeds sourced from environmentally extreme but predictable alvar habitats relative to less predictable prairie environments. Fitness landscapes based on seed source origin, largely characterized by varying water availability and flower production, described selection as the degree of maladaptation of seed source environment relative to the prairie common garden environment. Plants from alvar populations were consistently closer to the fitness optimum across all years. Annually, the breadth of the fitness optimum expanded primarily along a moisture gradient, with inclusion of more populations onto the expanding optimum. Conclusions These results highlight the importance of temporally and spatially varying selection in life-history evolution, indicating plasticity may become a primary mechanism needed to track fitness for later life-history events within perennial systems.