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Premise: Reproductive fitness of individual plants depends on the timing of flowering, especially in mate‐limited populations, such as those in fragmented habitats. When flowering time traits are associated with differential reproductive success, the narrow‐sense heritability (h2) of traits will determine how rapidly trait means evolve in response to selection. Heritability of flowering time is documented in many annual plants. However, estimating h2 of flowering time in perennials presents additional methodological challenges, often including paternity assignment and trait expression over multiple years. Methods: We evaluated the h2 of onset and duration of flowering using offspring–midparent regressions and restricted maximum likelihood methods in an experimental population of an iterocarpic, perennial, herbaceous plant, Echinacea angustifolia, growing in natural conditions. We assessed the flowering time of the parental cohort in 2005 and 2006; the offspring in 2014 through 2017. We also examined the effects of the paternity assignment from Cervus and MasterBayes on estimates of h2. Results: We found substantial h2 for onset and duration of flowering. We also observed variation in estimates among years. The most reliable estimates for both traits fell in the range of 0.1–0.17. We found evidence of a genotype by year interaction for onset of flowering and strong evidence that genotypes are consistent in their duration of flowering across years. Conclusions: Substantial heritabilities in this population imply the capacity for a response to natural selection, while also suggesting the potential for differential contributions to adaptive evolution among seasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a discussion of the legal context of evaluation systems upon which merit pay programs are based. Following the discussion of the law, a model merit pay program is presented. (MLF)

Describes problems in the identification portion of programs for the gifted, in defining giftedness, and in selecting the means of identification, and justifying program content. Focuses on interest-based identification in the context of the law in order to eliminate discrimination against low SES students. (KH)

• Increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration have an impact on plant communities by influencing plant growth and morphology, species interactions, and ecosystem processes. These ecological effects may be accompanied by evolutionary change if elevated CO2 (eCO2) alters patterns of natural selection or expression of genetic variation. • Here, a statistically powerful quantitative genetic experiment and manipulations of CO2 concentrations in a field setting were used to investigate how eCO2 impacts patterns of selection on ecologically important traits in Arabidopsis thaliana; heritabilities, which influence the rate of response to selection; and genetic covariances between traits, which may constrain responses to selection. • CO2 had strong phenotypic effects; plants grown in eCO2 were taller and produced more biomass and fruits. Also, significant directional selection was observed on many traits and significant genetic variation was observed for all traits. However, no evolutionary effect of eCO2 was detected; patterns of selection, heritabilities and genetic correlations corresponded closely in ambient and elevated CO2 environments. • The data suggest that patterns of natural selection and the quantitative genetic parameters of this A. thaliana population are robust to increases in CO2 concentration and that responses to eCO2 will be primarily ecological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]