title: The effects of age and environment on the expression of inbreeding depression in Eucalyptus globulus.
abstract: Inbreeding adversely affects fitness traits in many plant and animal species, and the magnitude, stability and genetic basis of inbreeding depression (ID) will have short- and long-term evolutionary consequences. The effects of four degrees of inbreeding (selfing, f=50%; full- and half-sib matings, f=25 and 12.5%; and unrelated outcrosses, f=0%) on survival and growth of an island population of Eucalyptus globulus were studied at two sites for over 14 years. For selfs, ID in survival increased over time, reaching a maximum of 49% by age 14 years. However, their inbreeding depression for stem diameter remained relatively stable with age, and ranged from 28 to 36% across years and sites. ID for survival was markedly greater on the more productive site, possibly due to greater and earlier onset of inter-tree competition, but was similar on both sites for the diameter of survivors. The deleterious trait response to increasing inbreeding coefficients was linear for survival and diameter. Non-significant quadratic effects suggested that epistasis did not contribute considerably to the observed ID at the population level. Among- and within-family coefficients of variation for diameter increased with inbreeding degree, and the variance among the outcrossed families was significant only on the more productive site. The performance of self-families for diameter was highly stable between sites. This suggests that, for species with mixed mating systems, environmentally stable inbreeding effects in open-pollinated progenies may tend to mask the additive genotype-by-environment interaction for fitness traits and the adaptive response to the environment.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Estudos Florestais, Departamento de Ambiente, Território e Recursos Naturais, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Costa E Silva
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hardner
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tilyard
authors.forename: B M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Potts
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D004777:Environment; D005052:Eucalyptus / Q000235:genetics*; D014644:Genetic Variation; D007178:Inbreeding; D012641:Selection, Genetic