Abstract
1This study investigated 15 coexisting dominant species in a humid subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest in southwest China, consisting of long-lived pioneers and climax species occurring in natural and disturbed regimes. The authors hypothesized that there would be non-tradeoff scaling relationships between sprouting and seed size among species, with the aim of uncovering the ecological relationship between plant sprouting and seed characteristics in the two functional groups.2The sprouting variations of the species were initially examined using pairwise comparisons between natural and disturbed habitats within and across species and were noted to show a continuum in persistence niches across the forest dominants, which may underlie the maintenance of plant diversity. Second, a significantly positive, rather than tradeoff, relationship between sprout number and seed size across species within each of the two functional groups was observed, and an obvious elevational shift with a common slope among the two groups in their natural habitat was examined. The results indicate the following: 1) the relationship of seed size vs. sprouts in the natural habitat is more likely to be bet-hedging among species within a guild in a forest; 2) climax species tend to choose seeding rather than sprouting regeneration, and vice versa for the long-lived pioneers; and 3) the negative correlation between sprouting and seed dispersal under disturbed conditions may imply a tradeoff between dispersal and persistence in situ during the process of plant regeneration.3These findings may be of potential significance for urban greening using native species.
Highlights
Plant regeneration is an important ecological process for a forest ecosystem in which the sprouting and seeding of woody species is involved [1]
Human activities affect sprouting capacity of trees in general; the effect of this interference differs with species
The above tendencies were maintained in phylogenetic independent contrasts (PICs), with the exception of a weak correction in pooled data across the 15 species in disturbed habitat (DH) (Table 2). These results show that the relationship between sprouting capability and species seed size varies considerably between the two species groups in natural habitats and remained when phylogeny signals were removed
Summary
Plant regeneration is an important ecological process for a forest ecosystem in which the sprouting and seeding of woody species is involved [1]. As a mechanism for shaping community dynamics [2], plant regeneration is important for the succession of forest communities and for the stability and restoration of vegetation in a forest ecosystem following various disturbances. Sprouts, as one of the two plant regenerative traits [4], have been reported to correlate in part to seed size. It has been argued that there is a tradeoff between sprouts and seed size [15,16] due to competition for resources between vegetative and reproductive growth [14] relative to starch-tissue content [17]. Few significant associations have been reported far
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