Intraspecific differences of Asian/Australian Phragmites australis subgroups reveal no potentially invasive traits

Abstract

Phragmites australis is a cosmopolitan plant species with high intraspecific diversity and phenotypic plasticity. Due to its variability and large ecological niche breadth, subgroups of P. australis have become invasive in North America, and this invasion has been recognized late. While this cryptic invasion on the American continent has received much attention, little is known about the potential invasiveness of other subgroups, especially within Asian/Australian P. australis. We therefore compared the performance of three subgroups within the Asian/Australian group: a freshwater (CN) and an estuarine (YRD) subgroup collected in China and a genetically closely related subgroup collected from Australia (FEAU), grown in two common gardens in China. Our results showed that the FEAU subgroup had no strong invasive potential, as its total biomass, height, shoot number, specific leaf area, and stomatal conductance were lower than that of the two native subgroups. All three subgroups responded similarly with most traits to the different climates of the gardens, albeit with different response strength, expressed as phenotypic plasticity indices. The potential cryptic invasion risk of the FEAU subgroup in China seems to be low, since its functional traits showed low competitiveness and most traits with the lowest plasticity occurred in FEAU. However, caution is still advised, because other invasive mechanisms, such as enemy release or the performance under extreme environmental conditions were not tested in our study.