The contribution of non-additive genetic effects to the genetic variance of polyploid species

Whole genome duplication is a common mutation in eukaryotes with far-reaching phenotypic effects. The resulting morphological, physiological, and fitness consequences and how they affect the survival probability of newly polyploid lineages are intensively studied, but very little is known about the effect of genome doubling on the short-term evolvability of populations. Understanding the effect of polyploidization on the adaptive potential of populations is of crucial importance to predict the future of polyploid populations. In this paper, I investigate the immediate consequences of genome doubling on the genetic variance of populations. To do so, I performed numerical iterations and simulations of how the genetic variance of a quantitative trait changes after polyploidization, under different genetic architectures (additivity, dominance, and epistasis). I found that genetic variance generally decreases after genome doubling. Non-additive gene actions can make autotetraploid populations genetically more diverse than their diploid progenitors in rare cases, notably with overdominance and directional epistasis. By collecting estimates from the agronomic literature, I found that both dominance and epistatic variance contribute to the genetic variance of polyploid populations. These results bring new insights into the adaptive potential of newly formed tetraploid populations, and call for further experimental investigations of how polyploidization is associated with a short-term decrease in evolvability.