The new experiment to test this is very helpful, and does provide good evidence that FLMB expression level is important for flowering time variation. My concern is with interpretation: The authors provide several explanations for why the correlation between flowering and FLMB expression in this accession set is lower than in the transgenics. This is trivial because there is much more variation within each haplotype class in the accessions than the transgenics, because they vary at many loci across the genome. I think the real question should be: Is the slope of the relationship between FLMB and flowering time significantly less in the accessions? This would ask if the equivalent change in FLMB expression would cause the same change in flowering. This is a more meaningful metric than change in R2. The correct test would be to include both accessions and transgenics in the same model (flowering_time ~ FLMB * genotype_class), and ask if the interaction is significant.