Widespread genetic variation for SC linked and unlinked to the S-locus in SI populations

What is it about?

There is a long history of modeling the evolution and maintenance of plant mating strategies such as self-incompatibility. We have shown for the first time that self-incompatible populations can contain self-compatible alleles at the S-locus AND continuous, heritable, genetic variation for pseudo self-compatibility unlinked to the S-locus. This was unexpected as theory predicts that only narrow range of conditions should maintain modifier alleles that cause pseudo self-compatibility, whereas the variation we found was widespread across all populations surveyed.

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Why is it important?

We found an unexpected level of heritable variation for pseudo self-compatibility (both continuous and discrete), so we do not know how this variation is maintained or how these populations would respond to changes in selection. The association between S-alleles in highly self-compatible individuals and recessivity is also notable.