Is there a genetic basis for fluctuating asymmetry and does it predict fitness in the plant Lotus corniculatus grown in different environmental conditions?

Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is considered to be a good measure of developmen tal stability. We measured the asymmetry of leaves and flowers of 16 differ ent genotypes of Lotus corniculatus grown in four different experimental en vironments to estimate the plasticity or developmental stability of asymmet ry itself. We found that an index of FA (absolute difference between size o f left and right sides, corrected for trait size) differed significantly ac ross environments, with the treatment CO2+/N+ inducing the greatest FA for both flowers and leaves. Genotypes did not differ in FAs. Individual plants showed significantly different FAs only for flowers. At the individual lev el, we found no significant relationship between flower FA and fitness. Pre vious work indicates that change in asymmetry in a poor or perturbing envir onment Versus a good environment could reflect the intrinsic quality of a p articular genotype. However, in our experiment, genotype effect was signifi cant only for change in asymmetry of leaves, and this last trait was not si gnificantly correlated with our fitness estimate for each genotype in eithe r the most or the least perturbing environment.