Interactive effects of immediate and ancestral salt stress on fitness in duckweed

Premise of Research
Organisms that reproduce asexually must respond to abiotic stresses in their environment while contending with the potential disadvantage of the reduced ability for genetic variation through recombination. Common duckweed (Lemna minor) is an aquatic plant that reproduces predominantly asexually through the budding of ramets. As a freshwater plant, duckweed experiences stress from salt (e.g., NaCl), which detrimentally affects growth, photosynthesis, and cellular processes. We took a demographic approach to examine whether ancestral exposure to salt stress affects the ability of duckweed offspring to tolerate immediate exposure to the same stress.
Methodology
We placed three consecutive clonal generations of duckweed in an environment with 2 g L-1 NaCl (non-lethal salt stress) or 0 g L-1 NaCl (control), followed by an additional 0-3 generations in the control environment to vary the presence and schedule of ancestral stress. After these treatments, we used the offspri..., , R software is required to run the script.,