Data from: Evolution of drought resistance strategies following the introduction of white clover (Trifolium repens L.)

Kooyers, Nicholas 1 ; Hendrickson, Brandon T.1; Stamps, Caitlyn1; Patterson, Courtney M.1; Strickland, Hunter2; Foster, Michael2; Albano, Lucas J.3; Kim, Audrey Y.4; Kim, Paul Y.4

Published Mar 27, 2025 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hqbzkh1tt

Data files

Mar 27, 2025 version files 4.68 KB

fileA.csv

2.16 KB
README.md
2.51 KB

Abstract

Background and Aims: Success during colonization likely depends on growing quickly and tolerating novel and stressful environmental conditions. However, rapid growth, stress avoidance, and stress tolerance are generally considered divergent physiological strategies.

Methods: We evaluate how white clover (Trifolium repens) has evolved to a divergent water regime following introduction to North America. We conduct RNAseq within a dry-down experiment utilizing accessions from low and high latitude populations from native and introduced ranges, and assess variation in dehydration avoidance (ability to avoid wilting) and dehydration tolerance (ability to survive wilting).

Key Results: Introduced populations are better at avoiding dehydration, but poorer at tolerating dehydration than native populations. There is a strong negative correlation between avoidance and tolerance traits and expression of most drought-associated genes exhibits similar tradeoffs. Candidate genes with expression strongly associated with dehydration avoidance are linked to stress signaling, closing stomata, and producing osmoprotectants. However, genes with expression linked to dehydration tolerance are associated with avoiding excessive ROS production and toxic bioproducts of stress responses. Several candidate genes show differential expression patterns between native and introduced ranges, and could underlie differences in drought resistance syndromes between ranges.

Conclusions: These results suggest there has been strong selection following introduction for dehydration avoidance at the cost of surviving dehydration. More broadly, tradeoffs between dehydration avoidance and tolerance responses likely exist both at the genetic and phenotypic scales that will influence evolutionary responses and potentially limit the global spectrum of plant form and function.

This dataset contains a single .csv file (fileA.csv) that contains data on drought resistance phenotypes and metadata for 27 individuals within the reported dry-down experiment. The dry-down experiment was conducted on ~2 month old plants with the primary phenotypes of interest being the volumetric water content of soil at plant wilt and the survival following wilting. After wilting, plants were left for 48h before rehydration and survival was assessed after 72h. Further experimental details are provided in the parent paper: Hendrickson et al. 2025 (doi:10.1093/aob/mcaf037)

Description of the data and file structure

Each row of this .csv file represents an individual plant except for the first row header. There are no missing values. Descriptions of data within columns (Column – Header Name – Description):

Column A – PotN – A tag used to identify each pot
Column B – Population – the source population of the individual
Column C – City – Nearest City to the source population
Column D – Latitude – Whether the individual was from a low or high latitude population
Column E – Location – Whether the individual was from the native European range(EU) or introduced North American (NA) range
Column F – Flat – The initial flat of the pot, i.e., location within the growth chamber
Column G – LeafND1 – Leaves at the beginning of the experiment
Column H – WiltedD – Number of days from the beginning of the experiment to wilting
Column I – WiltedSM – Volumetric water content (cm3/cm3) of the soil at time of wilting
Column J – Rehydration – Survival after wilting, 0/1 corresponds to died/survived respectively.
Column K – LatitudeDecimal – latitude in decimal degrees for the individual’s source population
Column L – LongitudeDecimal – longitude in decimal degrees for the individual’s source population
Column M – annualea – Annual Potential Evapotranspiration (mm/year) from CGIAR for the individual’s source population
Column N – annualai – Annual Aridity Index (Index x 10,000) from CGIAR for the individual’s source population

Please note that WorldClim data for populations cannot be posted to the Dryad repository, but is available for each population in Supplementary Table 1.

Sharing/Access information

RNAseq data for these samples can be accessed on NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA) at Bioproject
PRJNA1098360

Data from: Evolution of drought resistance strategies following the introduction of white clover (Trifolium repens L.)

Data files

Abstract

README: Data from: Evolution of drought resistance strategies following the introduction of white clover (Trifolium repens L.) Phenotype Dataset

Description of the data and file structure

Sharing/Access information

Works referencing this dataset