Orr, Adam JPadovan, AmandaKainer, DavidKulheim, CarstenBromham, LindellBustos-Segura, CarlosFoley, WilliamHaff, TonyaHsieh, Ji-FanMorales-Suarez, AlejandroCartwright, Reed ALanfear, Robert2020-09-072020-09-070962-8452http://hdl.handle.net/1885/209372Somatic mutations can have important effects on the life history, ecology, andevolution of plants, but the rate at which they accumulate is poorly under-stood and difficult to measure directly. Here, we develop a method tomeasure somatic mutations in individual plants and use it to estimate thesomatic mutation rate in a large, long-lived, phenotypically mosaicEucalyp-tus melliodoratree. Despite being 100 times larger thanArabidopsis,this treehas a per-generation mutation rate only ten times greater, which suggeststhat this species may have evolved mechanisms to reduce the mutationrate per unit of growth. This adds to a growing body of evidence that illu-minates the correlated evolutionary shifts in mutation rate and life history in plantsapplication/pdfen-AU© 2020 The Authors.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/202010.1098/rspb.2019.23642020-05-25Creative Commons Attribution License