Life-history trade-offs explain local adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

In Swedish Arabidopsis thaliana, multi-year field and common-garden tests show strong, variable selection where some genotypes are favored more than fivefold by year and location.

• Why it matters: Local adaptation is common, but which traits and what temporal or spatial scales selection acts on are often unclear.
• What they did: Across 200 natural inbred accessions, the study combined local field sites, common-garden measurements of adult survival and fecundity, and full life-cycle selection experiments.
• The result: Fecundity is linked to home proximity, while southern accessions show higher fecundity but greater sensitivity to harsh winters and slug herbivory; beach-origin accessions have low common-garden fecundity yet massively outperform others in selection, implying seedling establishment advantages.

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