New research suggests that natural selection, famous for rewarding advantageous differences in organisms, can also preserve similarities. The researchers worked with a plant called wild radish and its stamens, or pollen-producing parts, two of which are short and four are long. Roughly 55 million years ago, wild radish ancestors had stamens of equal length. The team selectively bred -- or artificially selected -- wild radish to reduce the difference in stamen length and return the plant to a more ancestral look. This shows that today's wild radish and, likely, its family members still have the requisite genetic variability to evolve, but natural selection is preserving its different stamen lengths.
Natural selection is usually understood in the context of change. When organisms deviate from the norm, they may gain advantages that let their lineages outlast those of their less-adaptable relatives.
Conner is also a faculty member in the Department of Plant Biology and MSU's Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, or EEB, program. Additionally, he serves as president-elect of the American Society of Naturalists.that expands science's understanding of natural selection in the face of another evolutionary mechanism called genetic constraint.
During the peer-review process, the work was described as a fascinating project that challenged long-standing assumptions.This new paper builds on another report from Conner's group from earlier this year, led by graduate student Robin Waterman.
To evaluate the influence of selection and constraint on this family's distinctive stamen trait, the team turned to what's called artificial selection. That is, they selectively bred wild radishes whose stamens were closer to the same length to try and change that characteristic. "This family of plants has maintained this four-long, two-short trait over 50 million years and we can get rid of a third of the difference in five generations, which would be five years," Conner said."My guess is if we kept going, we would get back to six stamens of equal length."
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