Abstract
Clonal plants, which reproduce by means of stolons and rhizomes, are common in frequently flooded habitats. Resilience to disturbance is an important trait enabling plants to survive in such highly disturbed habitats. Resource storage is thought to enable clonal plants to resume growth after clonal fragmentation caused by disturbance. Here we investigated if submergence prior to disturbance reduces survival and regrowth of clonal fragments and whether or not genotypes originating from highly disturbed riverine habitats are more resistant to mechanical disturbance than genotypes from less disturbed coastal dune slack habitats. We further tested if variation in survival and regrowth was affected by internode size. Clones from contrasting habitats of two closely related Trifolium species were first genotypically characterized by amplification fragment length polymorphism and then subjected to soil flooding and subsequent clonal fragmentation. These species differ with respect to their abundance in riverine and dune slack habitats, with Trifolium repens mainly occurring in riverine grasslands and Trifolium fragiferum in coastal dune slacks. Soil flooding decreased survival and regrowth by up to 80 %. Plants originating from riverine grasslands were less negatively affected by fragmentation than plants from dune slack habitats. Surprisingly, ramets did not always benefit from being attached to a larger internode, as internode size was often negatively correlated with survival after fragmentation. Regrowth, on the other hand, was generally positively correlated with internode size. These unexpected results indicate that there may be contrasting selection pressures on internode size in stoloniferous species growing in severely disturbed habitats.
Highlights
Flooding is an increasingly common stress affecting plant growth and vegetation composition in flood-prone areas
Light limitation, toxic soil compounds and mechanical disturbance may all act at the same time during flooding
While the dune slack habitats are mainly characterized by flooding during winter and early spring caused by slowly rising water levels, the riverine grasslands can be flooded for several shorter times during the year but with faster inundation and higher final water tables
Summary
Flooding is an increasingly common stress affecting plant growth and vegetation composition in flood-prone areas. Light limitation, toxic soil compounds and mechanical disturbance may all act at the same time during flooding These stresses may each select for specific plant traits, but it is remarkable that plant communities in flood-prone habitats are often characterized by a high prevalence of vegetatively reproducing plants (Benot et al 2011), i.e. forming stolons, rhizomes or root suckers (Fischer and Van Kleunen 2001; Klimesova and de Bello 2009). It has been argued that the presence of parts of the stolon can positively affect plant survival after clone fragmentation (Stuefer and Huber 1999; Dong et al 2010, 2011, 2012; Song et al 2013) This may be beneficial after a flooding event when part of the clone has become disconnected due to mechanical stress as a result of strong water currents or mortality of the remainder of the clone. Survival after clone fragmentation is important for the maintenance of existing populations, but may have important consequences for gene flow among populations or establishment of new populations
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