High tolerance to zinc but no evidence for local adaptation in the aquatic plant Lemna minor

Duckweeds are a widely distributed and economically important aquatic plant family that have high potential for phytoremediation of polluted water bodies. We collected four ecotypes of the common duckweed (Lemna minor) from the four corners of Switzerland and assessed how their home vs. away environments influenced their growth. Additionally, we investigated their response to a metal pollutant (Zn) in both their home and away environments. Zn is found in freshwater systems and can become harmful to plants at elevated concentrations. We hypothesized that growing in their home environment would help the plants buffer the negative effect of the metal pollutant. To test this, we measured Lemna growth in a common garden experiment in a glasshouse where the four ecotypes were grown in each of the water environments, as well as in three different concentrations of Zn. To investigate whether interactions between Lemna and their microbial community can enhance or reduce tolerance to heavy metal ..., Summary
The data are based on a glasshouse common garden experiment in which four Lemna minor ecotypes from Switzerland were matched to their home water and received the water from the three other ecotypes (away). Additionally, we crossed this design with the application of Zn (in the form of ZnSO4). We used three Zn treatment levels: no Zn (control), low Zn and high Zn. Each treatment combination was replicated four times, resulting in a total of 192 experimental units (four ecotypes x four water environments x three Zn treatments x four replicates. The experiment ran for 22 days in a glasshouse.
The data submission includes two data files:
1) Data_fronds_fluoroprobe.xlsx contains the data on the number of Lemna fronds counted during the experiment, as well as the Fluoroprobe data measured at the end of the experiment. A second sheet also includes the fluoroprobe data from field samples. Metadata are included.
2) TOC_TN.xslx contains the data on the final nutrient concentration in the ..., Data analyses were done in R. The R scripts can be found on Zenodo.Â