Specialized compounds across ontogeny in the seagrass Posidonia oceanica

Abstract

Differences in phenolic composition across different ontogenic stages can be crucial in determining the interaction outcomes between plants and their surrounding biotic environment. In seagrasses, specific phenolic compounds have rarely been analyzed and remain unexplored in ontogenic stages other than non-reproductive adults. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that plants would prioritize defense (e.g., through increased phenolic content) on tissues or stages that are critical for plant fitness but how this affects nutritional quality or plant resources has been scarcely explored. We analyzed how phenolic composition, N and C content and carbohydrate resources varied among different life stages (i.e. old and young leaves of reproductive and non-reproductive plants, and leaves of seedlings) in the seagrass Posidonia oceanica. We identified five phenolic compounds, whose structures were established as hydroxycinnamate esters of tartaric acid. Also, our results show that in all examined ontogenic stages phenolic compounds have the same qualitative composition but inflorescences exhibit higher contents than vegetative tissues. We did not find a reduction in stored resources in reproductive plants, pointing to some kind of compensatory mechanism in the production or storage of resources. In contrast, seedlings seemed to have less phenolic compounds than reproductive plants, perhaps due to limited resources available to allocate to phenolic production. Our results demonstrate how different ontogenic stages change their investment in specialized phenolic compounds prioritizing different functions according to the needs and limitations of that stage.