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Does pollen competition reduce the cost of inbreeding?¹

²Institute of Arctic Biology and Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775 USA; ³Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway; ⁴School of Biological Sciences, King Henry Building, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK

We hypothesize that floral features promoting pollen competition in angiosperms may have evolved, in some cases, in response to selection generated by the negative effects of inbreeding, at least in plants with mixed-mating systems. Screening of haploid genotypes through pollen competition may purge recessive (or additive) deleterious alleles that are expressed in haploid pollen and hence may reduce the fitness cost of self-pollination, geitonogamy, or biparental inbreeding. We tested one prediction of this hypothesis, that offspring produced by more intense competition among self-pollen have higher fitness than offspring produced by less intense competition. Dalechampia scandens (Euphorbiaceae) flowers were pollinated with pollen from other flowers on the same plant (geitonogamous self-fertilization). Those flowers experiencing more intense pollen competition as a result of low pollen dispersion (positional variance) on the stigma produced heavier seeds and seedlings with faster-growing radicles than flowers experiencing less intense pollen competition (high pollen dispersion), as predicted by our hypothesis.

Key Words: Dalechampia scandens • Euphorbiaceae • genetic load • inbreeding depression • male gametophyte • mating-system evolution • pollen competition

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