Assortative mating may have facilitated rapid evolution of locally adaptive phenologies during a biological invasion
- 1Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 3B2 Canada.
Abstract
Assortative mating for a trait under selection can increase the rate of adaptive evolution and limit introgression of detrimental alleles. We therefore hypothesized that assortative mating facilitated the rapid evolution of flowering phenology observed in the self-incompatible perennial Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife) as it invaded eastern North America. We characterized flowering schedules of 600 individuals representing 20 populations sampled along a latitudinal gradient of 10 degrees and grown in a common garden at mid-latitude. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that flowering schedules were less synchronous in the mixed population of the common garden (s = 0.50) relative to the 20 locally adapted populations comprising it (s = 0.56 to 0.86), and flowering synchrony decreased towards higher latitudes of origin. Despite high synchrony, assortment potential ({rho}) by growth and phenology varied by population ({rho} = 0.03 to 0.61), but the predicted negative correlation between s and {rho} was masked by among-individual fitness variation in the common garden. We show how fitness variation and asynchrony associated with locally adapted phenology can reduce the fitness impacts of maladaptive gene flow and accelerate the rate of adaptive evolution during invasion.
Related
- Go and grow: coordinated evolution of vegetative and reproductive traits facilitated niche diversification in Thymelaeaceae
- Phantom genetic nurture: assortative mating accounts for most of the apparent association between parental genotypes and childhood cognitive performance
- Experimental evolution reveals genetic routes for adaptive loss of the antibacterial type VI secretion system
- Adaptive Evolution of C4 Photosynthesis through Recurrent Lateral Gene Transfer
- Mitochondrial rearrangement and adaptive evolution in whale lice (Amphipoda): molecular signatures of obligate parasitism
BibTeX
@misc{quijano2026assortative,
title = {{Assortative mating may have facilitated rapid evolution of locally adaptive phenologies during a biological invasion}},
author = {M. J. Gomez Quijano and M. N. Akbar and E. Crowson and R. I. Colautti},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.08.757682},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.08.757682v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Assortative mating may have facilitated rapid evolution of locally adaptive phenologies during a biological invasion
AU - M. J. Gomez Quijano
AU - M. N. Akbar
AU - E. Crowson
AU - R. I. Colautti
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/08
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.08.757682
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.08.757682v1
AB - Assortative mating for a trait under selection can increase the rate of adaptive evolution and limit introgression of detrimental alleles. We therefore hypothesized that assortative mating facilitated the rapid evolution of flowering phenology observed in the self-incompatible perennial Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife) as it invaded eastern North America. We characterized flowering schedules of 600 individuals representing 20 populations sampled along a latitudinal gradient of 10 degrees and grown in a common garden at mid-latitude. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that flowering schedules were less synchronous in the mixed population of the common garden (s = 0.50) relative to the 20 locally adapted populations comprising it (s = 0.56 to 0.86), and flowering synchrony decreased towards higher latitudes of origin. Despite high synchrony, assortment potential ({rho}) by growth and phenology varied by population ({rho} = 0.03 to 0.61), but the predicted negative correlation between s and {rho} was masked by among-individual fitness variation in the common garden. We show how fitness variation and asynchrony associated with locally adapted phenology can reduce the fitness impacts of maladaptive gene flow and accelerate the rate of adaptive evolution during invasion.
ER -