Effects of polyploidy and reproductive mode on life history trait expression

Although genomes are perhaps the single most important element of living systems, why they feature such striking variation and how this variation is maintained within and across natural populations remains unclear. One of the most common and important means by which genomic variation is generated is ploidy elevation. While polyploidy has been implicated in the remarkably successful radiations of angiosperms, teleost fish, and amphibians, the phenotypic consequences of changes in ploidy level are poorly understood, especially in animals. I use a large, multi-year common garden experiment to identify potential life history costs and benefits of polyploidy and asexual reproduction, a trait often associated with polyploidy, in Potamopyrgus antipodarum. This snail is well suited for studying ploidy variation and sex because diploid sexuals and triploid and tetraploid asexuals frequently coexist, allowing us to use comparisons of sexuals to asexuals and triploid to tetraploid asexuals to study both the effects of ploidy elevation and sex. I detected a strong negative correlation between growth rate and time to maturity and found that sexual P. antipodarum grew and matured significantly more slowly than the polyploid asexuals. Sexual P. antipodarum were also more likely to die before achieving reproductive maturity than their asexual counterparts. By contrast, there were no apparent life history differences between triploid and tetraploid asexuals, indicating that direct phenotypic benefits of ploidy elevation are unlikely to explain the relatively rapid growth and maturation of asexuals. My results suggest that ploidy elevation does not inevitably confer phenotypic consequences, that reproductive mode influences life history trait expression, and that sexual P. antipodarum persist in many natural populations in spite of substantial life history disadvantages.