Is selfing a reproductive assurance promoting polyploid establishment? Reduced fitness, leaky self-incompatibility and lower inbreeding depression in neotetraploids.

Neotetraploids might have benefited from selfing at initial stages after their formation. Genome duplications resulted in leaky self-incompatibility, enabling the production of offspring under minority cytotype disadvantage with similar fitness as outcrossed offspring. Our results support theoretical assumptions that selfing might be important for neopolyploid establishment, although changes in self-incompatibility might not be abrupt.