Using a cost–benefit approach to understand the evolution of self‐fertilization in plants: the perplexing case of <i>Aquilegia canadensis</i> (Ranunculaceae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Plants exhibit tremendous variation in whether mating occurs via self‐fertilization versus outcrossing, and many species practice a mixture of both. In theory, the evolution of selfing is influenced by a few large costs and benefits, and the benefits of selfing should be balanced by its costs at equilibrium. We have attempted a cost–benefit analysis of selfing, using population genetic surveys, experimental manipulations and quantitative genetics to a spring‐flowering, short‐lived perennial, Aquilegia canadensis . This species invests heavily in large, nectar‐rich flowers but achieves full seed set in the absence of pollinators by automonous autogamy, and selfs 76% of its seed in natural populations. Floral emasculations reveal that 75% of selfing occurs via autogamy, which increases per‐flower seed production (reproductive assurance), but pre‐empts ovules and resources that could be used to make outcrossed seed (seed discounting). This is costly because outcrossed progeny appear to survive to maturity 10‐fold more often than selfed progeny. Almost all the apparent nonautogamous selfing involves cross‐pollination between relatives (biparental inbreeding). This could facilitate the evolution of mixed mating, but not when inbreeding is so strong. Though selfing seems strongly disadvantageous, A. canadensis exhibits striking heritable variation in the separation between anthers and stigmas within flowers (herkogamy), which correlates negatively with selfing. This suggests that the mating system is at equilibrium. There is no applicable theoretical explanation for high selfing in the face of strong inbreeding depression, which occurs in a variety of plants. Understanding the evolution of these enigmatic mating systems remains a major challenge.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".