Data from: Clinal variation in seed traits influencing life cycle timing in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Early life history transitions are crucial determining lifetime survival
and fecundity. Adaptive evolution in early life history traits involves a
complex interplay between the developing plant and its current and future
environments. We examined the plant’s earliest life history traits,
dissecting an integrated suite of pre-germination processes: primary
dormancy, thermal induction of secondary dormancy, and seasonal
germination response. We examined genetic variation in the three
processes, genetic correlations among the processes, and the scaling of
germination phenology with the source populations’ climates. A spring
annual life-history was associated with genetic propensities toward both
strong primary dormancy and heat-induced secondary dormancy, alone or in
combination. Lineages with similar winter and spring annual life-history
have both weak primary dormancy and weak thermal dormancy induction. A
genetic bias to adopt a spring annual strategy mediated by rapid loss of
primary dormancy, and high thermal dormancy induction is associated with a
climatic gradient characterized by increasing temperature in summer and
rainfall in winter. This study highlights the importance of considering
combinations of multiple genetically-based traits along a climatic
gradient as adaptive strategies differentiating annual plant life-history
strategies. Despite the genetic-climatic cline, there is polymorphism for
life-history strategies within population, classically interpreted as
bet-hedging in an unpredictable world.