A plant biodiversity effect resolved to a single genetic locus - datasets

Despite extensive evidence that biodiversity promotes plant community productivity, progress towards understanding the mechanistic basis of this effect remains slow, impeding the development of predictive ecological theory and agricultural applications. Here, we analysed non-additive interactions between genetically divergent Arabidopsis accessions in experimental plant communities. By combining methods from ecology and genetics, we identified a major effect locus that promotes complementarity amongst genotypes and above-ground productivity in mixed communities. In experiments with near-isogenic lines, we show that this diversity effect can act independently of other genomic regions and be resolved to a single locus representing less than 0.3% of the genome. Using plant-soil-feedback experiments, we demonstrate that allelic diversity also causes genotype-specific soil legacy responses in a subsequent growing period. Our work thus shows that positive diversity effects can be linked to single Mendelian factors, and that a range of complex community properties, some of which manifest themselves even after the original community has disappeared, can have a simple, single cause. This may pave the way to novel breeding strategies, focussing on phenotypic properties that manifest themselves beyond isolated individuals, i.e. at a higher level of biological organisation.