Experimental evolution experiment with drought and competition treatment (University of Frankfurt)
- Research plant: Papaver rhoeas
One expected impact of climate change is the altered frequency and intensity of drought. Due to their sessile lifestyle plants must be able to cope with these variations in water availability or suffer decreased fitness, or even mortality. One possible mechanism is rapid evolution. Consequently, we investigate the tolerance of plants to drought, whose previous generations were exposed to different precipitation predictability (less predictable vs. more predictable precipitation). In an experimental evolution study, we exposed the third generation of Papaver rhoeas to different drought intensities in a greenhouse. We coupled this experiment with a competition treatment, performed by adding the fast-growing species Gallium album.