Data from: Environmentally induced development costs underlie fitness tradeoffs

Local adaptation can lead to genotype‐by‐environment interactions, which
can create fitness tradeoffs in alternative environments, and govern the
distribution of biodiversity across geographic landscapes. Exploring the
ecological circumstances that promote the evolution of fitness tradeoffs
requires identifying how natural selection operates and during which
ontogenetic stages natural selection is strongest. When organisms disperse
to areas outside their natural range, tradeoffs might emerge when
organisms struggle to reach key life history stages, or alternatively, die
shortly after reaching life history stages if there are greater risks of
mortality associated with costs to developing in novel environments. We
used multiple populations from four ecotypes of an Australian native
wildflower (Senecio pinnatifolius) in reciprocal transplants to explore
how fitness tradeoffs arise across ontogeny. We then assessed whether the
survival probability for plants from native and foreign populations was
contingent on reaching key developmental stages. We found that fitness
tradeoffs emerged as ontogeny progressed when native plants were more
successful than foreign plants at reaching seedling establishment and
maturity. Native and foreign plants that failed to reach seedling
establishment died at the same rate, but plants from foreign populations
died quicker than native plants after reaching seedling establishment, and
died quicker regardless of whether they reached sexual maturity or not.
Development rates were similar for native and foreign populations, but
changed depending on the environment. Together, our results suggest that
natural selection for environment‐specific traits early in life history
created tradeoffs between contrasting environments. Plants from foreign
populations were either unable to develop to seedling establishment, or
they suffered increased mortality as a consequence of reaching seedling
establishment. The observation of tradeoffs together with environmentally
dependent changes in development rate suggest that foreign environments
induce organisms to develop at a rate different from their native habitat,
incurring consequences for lifetime fitness and population divergence.