Determining the scale at which variation in a single gene changes population yields.

Abstract

Plant trait diversity is known to influence population yield, but the scale at which this happens remains unknown: divergent individuals might change yields of immediate neighbors (neighbor scale) or of plants across a population (population scale). We use <i>Nicotiana attenuata</i> plants silenced in mitogen-activated protein kinase 4 (irMPK4) - with low water-use efficiency (WUE) - to study the scale at which water-use traits alter intraspecific population yields. In the field and glasshouse, we observed overyielding in populations with low percentages of irMPK4 plants, unrelated to water-use phenotypes. Paired-plant experiments excluded the occurrence of overyielding effects at the neighbor scale. Experimentally altering field arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal associations by silencing the Sym-pathway gene <i>NaCCaMK</i> did not affect reproductive overyielding, implicating an effect independent of belowground AMF interactions. Additionally, micro-grafting experiments revealed dependence on shoot-expressed <i>MPK4</i> for <i>N. attenuata</i> to vary its yield per neighbor presence. We find that variation in a single gene, <i>MPK4</i>, is responsible for population overyielding through a mechanism, independent of irMPK4's WUE phenotype, at the aboveground, population scale.