Abstract
Clonal growth allows plants to spread horizontally and to experience different levels of resources. If ramets remain physiologically integrated, clonal plants can reciprocally translocate resources between ramets in heterogeneous environments. But little is known about the interaction between benefits of clonal integration and patterns of resource heterogeneity in different patches, i.e., coincident patchiness or reciprocal patchiness. We hypothesized that clonal integration will show different effects on ramets in different patches and more benefit to ramets under reciprocal patchiness than to those under coincident patchiness, as well as that the benefit from clonal integration is affected by the position of proximal and distal ramets under reciprocal or coincident patchiness. A pot experiment was conducted with clonal fragments consisting of two interconnected ramets (proximal and distal ramet) of Fragaria orientalis. In the experiment, proximal and distal ramets were grown in high or low availability of resources, i.e., light and water. Resource limitation was applied either simultaneously to both ramets of a clonal fragment (coincident resource limitation) or separately to different ramets of the same clonal fragment (reciprocal resource limitation). Half of the clonal fragments were connected while the other half were severed. From the experiment, clonal fragments growing under coincident resource limitation accumulated more biomass than those under reciprocal resource limitation. Based on a cost-benefit analysis, the support from proximal ramets to distal ramets was stronger than that from distal ramets to proximal ramets. Through division of labour, clonal fragments of F. orientalis benefited more in reciprocal patchiness than in coincident patchiness. While considering biomass accumulation and ramets production, coincident patchiness were more favourable to clonal plant F. orientalis.
Highlights
In natural habitats, essential resources for plant survival, growth and reproduction, such as light and water, are often patchily distributed in space and time [1,2]
The results partly supported the hypothesis that effects of clonal integration on the performance of clonal plants, as measured by accumulation of biomass, production of new ramets and R/S ratio, are dependent on whether connected ramets experience reciprocal or coincident patchiness of above- and below-ground resources
The high clonal integration had been found in previous studies on F. orientalis [22,30,47] and other Fragaria species [20,48,49,50]
Summary
Essential resources for plant survival, growth and reproduction, such as light and water, are often patchily distributed in space and time [1,2]. Such fine-scale spatial resource heterogeneity affects many ecologically important processes and phenomena, which can range from responses of community [5,6,7,8,9], to populations [10,11,12,13,14], to individuals or parts of individuals [2,15] Clonal plants, especially those with long spacers between ramets, can potentially respond to resource heterogeneity on the between plants scale by enhancing fitness-relevant processes such as resource uptake, clonal expansion and offspring establishment in heterogeneous habitats [4,16]. The fitness of clonal plants partly depends on the level of source contrast and the complex of source heterogeneity
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