title: Epigenetic diversity increases the productivity and stability of plant populations.
abstract: Biological diversity within species can be an important driver of population and ecosystem functioning. Until now, such within-species diversity effects have been attributed to underlying variation in DNA sequence. However, within-species differences, and thus potentially functional biodiversity, can also be created by epigenetic variation. Here, we show that epigenetic diversity increases the productivity and stability of plant populations. Epigenetically diverse populations of Arabidopsis thaliana produce up to 40% more biomass than epigenetically uniform populations. The positive epigenetic diversity effects are strongest when populations are grown together with competitors and infected with pathogens, and they seem to be partly driven by complementarity among epigenotypes. Our study has two implications: first, we may need to re-evaluate previous within-species diversity studies where some effects could reflect epigenetic diversity; second, we need to incorporate epigenetics into basic ecological research, by quantifying natural epigenetic diversity and testing for its ecological consequences across many different species.
authors.affiliation: 1] Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, 3013 Bern, Switzerland [2] Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Zámek 1, 25243 Průhonice, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Vít
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Latzel
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Allan
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bortolini Silveira
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Colot
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bossdorf
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000382:microbiology; D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D010935:Plant Diseases / Q000235:genetics / Q000382:microbiology; D057685:Plant Weeds / Q000254:growth & development; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D044224:Pseudomonas syringae / Q000502:physiology; D012674:Senecio / Q000254:growth & development