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Land use affects flowering time: seasonal and genetic differentiation in the grassland plant Scabiosa columbaria

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Abstract

Management practices like mowing or grazing have a large impact on grassland species. Due to its evolutionary significance, the interaction between the flowering time of plants and land use is of special interest. Asynchronous flowering restricts gene flow between populations and promotes, as a consequence, their differentiation. We selected 12 populations across southern central Europe to study the impact of mowing and grazing on seasonal and genetic differentiation in the grassland species Scabiosa columbaria. We conducted a common garden experiment to analyse floral display between populations and applied molecular markers to assess genetic diversity and genetic differentiation between populations. We demonstrated explicitly that flowering time and genetic differentiation are linked with the type of land use. Populations from mown habitats flowered significantly earlier than populations from grazed sites. Furthermore, genetic differentiation was stronger between populations from sites of different land use than between populations from far away geographic regions. The results of this study indicate that populations of S. columbaria are seasonally adapted to mowing and grazing. Land use is, therefore, an important factor for evolution in grassland species, which promotes the development of seasonal ecotypes and clearly affects intraspecific variation.

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  1. Institute of Botany, University of Regensburg, 93040, Regensburg, Germany

    Christoph Reisch & Peter Poschlod

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  1. Christoph Reisch
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  2. Peter Poschlod
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Correspondence to Christoph Reisch.

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Reisch, C., Poschlod, P. Land use affects flowering time: seasonal and genetic differentiation in the grassland plant Scabiosa columbaria . Evol Ecol 23, 753–764 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-008-9270-4

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