Abstract：
Wild plant species provide excellent examples of qualitative traits that evolve in response to environmental challenges (e.g., flower color, heavy metal tolerance, cyanogenesis, and male sterility). In addition to such discrete characters, a dazzling array of continuously distributed, quantitative traits are expressed at every phase of the life cycle. These traits are known or suspected to have evolved by natural selection because they are heritable, differ among populations or closely related taxa occupying distinct habitats, and have individual phenotypes associated with survival and reproductive success. This special issue [American Journal of Botany 109(11)] focuses on the tools and approaches for detecting or inferring the ecological and genetic factors contributing to changes in genetically based variation of quantitative traits within or among populations, or causing their divergence among taxa. The assembled articles use one or more of three primary approaches to detect the process or outcome of natural selection on morphological, life history, reproductive, chemical, and physiological quantitative traits: the analysis of phenotypic or artificially imposed selection to detect direct and indirect selection on traits whose function is well-understood; common garden experiments, including reciprocal transplants and \"resurrection\" experiments; and quantitative genetic analyses designed to detect and to estimate the environmental and genetic sources of phenotypic variation or to forecast short-term evolutionary change. Together, these articles examine and reveal the adaptive capacity of quantitative traits and the genetically based constraints that may limit their directional evolutionary change, thereby informing and testing inferences, hypotheses, and predictions concerning the evolutionary trajectories of wild plant species.
摘要：
野生植物物种提供了响应环境挑战而进化的定性特征的优秀例子(例如，花的颜色,重金属耐受性，产蓝,和男性不育)。除了这些离散字符，一系列令人眼花缭乱的连续分布，数量性状在生命周期的每个阶段都有表达。已知或怀疑这些性状是通过自然选择进化而来的，因为它们是可遗传的，不同的种群或密切相关的分类群占据不同的栖息地，并具有与生存和生殖成功相关的个体表型。本特刊[美国植物学杂志109（11）]重点介绍了用于检测或推断生态和遗传因素的工具和方法，这些因素有助于种群内或种群之间基于遗传的数量性状变异的变化。或导致它们在分类群之间的分歧。组装制品使用三种主要方法中的一种或多种来检测形态学上自然选择的过程或结果，生活史,生殖,化学,和生理数量性状：分析表型或人工施加的选择，以检测功能众所周知的性状的直接和间接选择；常见的花园实验，包括相互移植和“复活”实验；以及旨在检测和估计表型变异的环境和遗传来源或预测短期进化变化的定量遗传分析。一起,这些文章研究并揭示了数量性状的适应能力和可能限制其方向性进化变化的遗传约束，从而通知和测试推论，假设，以及有关野生植物物种进化轨迹的预测。
