Introduction to the special issue of Ecological Modelling: “Modelling clonal plant growth: From ecological concepts to mathematics”

Abstract

Many clonal plants have two breeding systems, vegetative and seed propagation. In vegetative propagation, plants reproduce genetically identical offspring that have lower mortality rates. By contrast, the seed propagated offspring has higher mortality rate, however, the seed propagation acts an important role in maintaining the genetic diversity and reproduce widely. According to the experimental studies, the balance between the breeding systems, vegetative and seed propagation, is determined by several functions, such as resource allocation. The infection and spread of systemic pathogen also affect the optimal balance of the breeding systems.Thus, we examine the effect of invasion of systemic pathogen on the optimal balance of the breeding systems of clonal plant using lattice model in two cases, single population and mixed population. In the analysis, the equilibrium and its local stability were derived using approximation method and numerical simulation in single population. Additionally, two situations were assumed in mixed population, infected and uninfected populations, and the efficacy of seed propagation on the suppression of epidemic infections was examined by comparing the results in the two situations.As a result, seed propagation is an effective defensive behavior against systemic pathogens. In the single population, the plants increase their population by increasing the proportion of seed propagation when the epidemic pathogen has highly infective. In mixed population, the increasing proportion of seed propagation is the optimal breeding strategy to defend against the spread of a systemic pathogen.