🚨NEW PAPER! 🚨We investigate genetic differences in plant flowering time and thermal plasticity at a very small scale in geothermally heated areas shorturl.at/lF1Qj @journal-evo.bsky.social @stockholm-uni.bsky.social A 🧵

🧬We used a crossing design and a greenhouse heating experiment to assess how plants originating from different soil temperatures respond to temperature variations, revealing significant additive genetic variation for both flowering time and thermal plasticity

🌷A counter-gradient pattern emerged: plants from warmer soils tended to flower later than those from colder soils at a given temperature

🌡️However, origin soil temperature explained only a small portion of phenotypic variation, indicating that plants may not have fully adapted to local temperature conditions in geothermally-heated areas

🔍 Overall, while we found genetic differentiation in flowering time, there was no evidence of genetic differentiation in thermal plasticity. This suggests adaptation has primarily occurred through changes in mean flowering time