On deleterious mutations in perennials: inbreeding depression, mutation load and life-history evolution

In Angiosperms, perennials typically present much higher levels of inbreeding depression than annuals. One hypothesis to explain this pattern stems from the observation that inbreeding depression is expressed across multiple life stages in Angiosperms. It posits that increased inbreeding depression in more long-lived species could be explained by differences in the way mutations affect fitness in these species, through the life stages at which they are expressed. In this study, we investigate this hypothesis. We combine a physiological growth model and multilocus population genetics approaches to describe a full genotype-to-phenotype-to-fitness map. We study the behaviour of mutations affecting growth or survival, and explore their consequences in terms of inbreeding depression and mutation load. Although our results only agree with empirical data within a narrow range of conditions, we argue that they may point us towards the type of traits susceptible to underlie inbreeding depression in long-lived species, that is traits under sufficiently strong selection, on which selection decreases sharply as life expectancy increases. Then, we study the role deleterious mutations maintained at mutation-selection balance may play in the coevolution between growth and survival strategies. Description of the manuscriptThe main text of the manuscript, excluding captions and headers, is 5712 words long. There are 4 figures in the main text, numbered from 1 to 4. In the present file, pages 1 to 33 correspond to the main text (including title page, abstract and litterature cited), while the remaining pages (33 to 72) correspond to appendices. There are 5 sections in Appendices, which are all available at the end of the manuscript file. There are 12 figures in Appendices, numbered from S1 to S12.