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Strong genetic differentiation in the invasive annual grass Bromus tectorum across the Mojave–Great Basin ecological transition zone

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Abstract

Bromus tectorum, an inbreeding annual grass, is a dominant invader in sagebrush steppe habitat in North America. It is also common in warm and salt deserts, displaying a larger environmental tolerance than most native species. We tested the hypothesis that a suite of habitat-specific B. tectorum lineages dominates warm desert habitats. We sampled 30 B. tectorum Mojave Desert and desert fringe populations and genotyped 10–26 individuals per population using 69 single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) markers. We compared these populations to 11 Great Basin steppe and salt desert populations. Populations from warm desert habitats were dominated by members of two haplogroups (87 % of individuals) that were distinct from haplogroups common in Great Basin habitats. We conducted common garden studies comparing adaptive traits and field performance among haplogroups typically found in different habitats. In contrast to the haplogroup abundant in sagebrush steppe, warm desert haplogroups generally lacked a vernalization requirement for flowering. The most widespread warm desert haplogroup (Warm Desert 1) also had larger seeds and a higher root:shoot ratio than other haplogroups. In the field, performance of warm desert haplogroups was dramatically lower than the sagebrush steppe haplogroup at one steppe site, but one warm desert haplogroup performed as well as the steppe haplogroup under drought conditions at the other site. Our results suggest that B. tectorum succeeds in widely disparate environments through ecotypic variation displayed by distinct lineages of plants. Accounting for this ecotypic variation is essential in modeling its future distribution in response to climate change.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by grants from the USDA Cooperative State Research Service (2008-35320-18677 to S.E.M. and C.E.C.), the Joint Fire Sciences Program (JFSP-2007-1-3-10, JFSP-2011-S-2-6 to S.E.M.), the Bureau of Land Management (Integrated Cheatgrass Die-off Research Project to S.E.M. and E.A.L.), and the University of Nevada Reno (start-up funds to E.A.L.). Thanks to Phil Allen, Joshua Nicholson, David Salman, and Bettina Schultz for seed collection, to Keith Merrill and Sam Decker for help with the SNP analysis, to Suzette Clement and Joshua Nicholson for assistance with the field study in Utah, to Sandra Li, Owen Baughman, Bryce Wehan, and Erin Goergen for field and greenhouse assistance in Nevada, and to Bettina Schultz for preparing the color graphics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shrub Sciences Laboratory, USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, 735 North 500 East, Provo, UT, 84606, USA

    Susan E. Meyer

  2. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Nevada, Reno, 1664 N. Virginia Street, MS 186, Reno, NV, 89557, USA

    Elizabeth A. Leger

  3. Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, 84602, USA

    Desirée R. Eldon & Craig E. Coleman

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  1. Susan E. Meyer
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  2. Elizabeth A. Leger
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Correspondence to Susan E. Meyer.

Electronic supplementary material

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10530_2016_1105_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 1: Expanded version of dendrogram in Fig. 3 with all branch tips labeled, along with explanatory material relating SNP haplotype groups to SSR haplotypes reported in earlier work. (PDF 1770 kb)

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 5.

Table 5 Seed sources for 106 Bromus tectorum lines from Merrill et al. (2012) included in the seedling greenhouse study, identifying the SNP haplotype group, population name, number of lines used, and collection location information
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Appendix 2

See Fig. 7.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Precipitation during field studies at the Peavine, Nevada and Davis Mountain, Utah field sites. Values are monthly totals immediately preceding and during the field study period, and 30 year averages (1981–2010) for each site, from the Prism Climate Group (http://www.prism.oregonstate.edu)

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Appendix 3

See Fig. 8.

Fig. 8
figure 8

Differences in percent emergence, survival, and flowering among SNP haplotype groups for Bromus tectorum plants at the Utah and Nevada common gardens, presented as the percentage of seeds planted that emerged, survived, and flowered (means and standard errors). Data were analyzed on a per seed basis, as described in the main text, and letters indicating significant differences among haplotype groups are from Tukey’s HSD tests from those analyses

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Meyer, S.E., Leger, E.A., Eldon, D.R. et al. Strong genetic differentiation in the invasive annual grass Bromus tectorum across the Mojave–Great Basin ecological transition zone. Biol Invasions 18, 1611–1628 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-016-1105-6

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