Ongoing global warming, coupled with increased drought frequencies, together with other biotic drivers may have resulted in complex evolutionary adaptation. The resurrection approach, comparing ancestors raised from stored seeds with their contemporary descendants under common conditions, is a powerful method to test for recent evolution in plant populations.
We used 21–26-yr-old seeds of four European plant species – Matthiola tricuspidata, Plantago crassifolia, Clinopodium vulgare and Leontodon hispidus – stored in seed banks together with re-collected seeds from their wild populations. To test for evolutionary changes, we conducted a glasshouse experiment that quantified heritable changes in plant responses to drought and simulated insect herbivory.
In three out of the four studied species, we found evidence that descendants had evolved shorter life cycles through faster growth and flowering. Shifts in the osmotic potential and leaf dry matter content indicated that descendants also evolved increased drought tolerance. A comparison of quantitative genetic differentiation (QST) vs neutral molecular differentiation (FST) values, using double digest restriction-site associated DNA (ddRAD) genotyping data, suggested that directional selection, and therefore adaptive evolution, was underlying some of the observed phenotypic changes.
In summary, our study revealed evolutionary changes in plant populations over the last decades that are consistent with adaptation of drought escape and tolerance as well as herbivory avoidance.