Comparative plant ecology

Seed retention of ten common weed species at oat harvest reveals the potential for harvest weed seed control

Plants have developed numerous strategies to maximise resource uptake in response to the highly heterogeneous resource distribution in soils. Clonal growth enables plants to scavenge larger surfaces, potentially maximising nutrient acquisition by selectively growing in nutrient-rich patches. However, the production of clonal units put plants into higher intraspecific competition. In gynodioecious clonal plants, genders usually exhibit sexual dimorphism in several growth and life history traits, but whether the genders have different competitive abilities and whether these are affected by nutrient distribution is underexplored. Here, we investigated whether the genders of Glechoma hederacea have different competitive abilities and whether these are affected by soil nutrient distribution using a greenhouse pot experiment. Female and hermaphrodite ramets were grown either alone or in competition with the same or the opposite gender in two different soil nutrient distributions for four months. Our results show that competition was the strongest factor affecting biomass accumulation and allocation. Females and hermaphrodites showed little sexual dimorphism in total biomass accumulation, but they differed in how they allocated this biomass between roots and shoots and in their clonal growth strategies in response to soil nutrient distribution. Taken together, our results indicate that soil nutrient distribution affects the competitive abilities of G. hederacea in a gender-specific manner. In the field, these differences would determine the structure and the dynamics of the two genders within the populations.

/pdf/intraspecific-sexual-competition-in-the-clonal-gynodioecious-4vwd39mfqw.pdf

Intraspecific sexual competition in the clonal gynodioecious herb Glechoma hederacea in response to patchy nutrient distribution

xiv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION CHAFFER 2: REVIEW OF GRAZING ECOLOGY 2.

Grazing ecology of goats, red deer and South American camelids

Root plasticity has been largely studied on herbaceous species of north European temperate flora and is defined as the ratio between root depth in dry soils and root depth in wet soils. In summer dry habitats such as Mediterranean environments, the soil water deficit is a common feature to which root systems of plant species should adapt to improve their ecological efficiency. The aim of this study was to compare root plasticity in annual Mediterranean species that regenerate exclusively from seeds, and herbaceous perennial Mediterranean species that use dual regeneration strategies. Root plasticity of ten herbaceous species, six perennials and four annuals, was compared in this study. The annuals species studied occur in lowland Mediterranean grasslands referred to Tuberarietea guttatae class (Dasypyrum villosum, Lophochloa pubescens, Ornithopus compressus, Rumex bucephalophorus), while the perennial species occur in montane sub-Mediterranean grasslands referred to Festuco brometea (Bromus erect...

Comparative plant ecology

Citations

Seed retention of ten common weed species at oat harvest reveals the potential for harvest weed seed control

Intraspecific sexual competition in the clonal gynodioecious herb Glechoma hederacea in response to patchy nutrient distribution

Grazing ecology of goats, red deer and South American camelids

Root plasticity in Mediterranean herbaceous species

Assessing the connectivity of calcareous grassland plant communities

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