Masting promotes individual- and population-level reproduction by increasing pollination efficiency
| Autor: | Yan B. Linhart, Xoaquín Moreira, Kailen A. Mooney, Luis Abdala-Roberts |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Pollination success
Time Factors Pollination Population ComputingMilieux_LEGALASPECTSOFCOMPUTING Sex allocation Trade-off Biology Seed cone Reproductive synchrony InformationSystems_GENERAL Plant reproductive morphology Mast (botany) education ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Boulder Canyon Colorado USA education.field_of_study ComputingMilieux_THECOMPUTINGPROFESSION Reproductive success Ecology Masting Wind pollination Pinus ponderosa ComputingMilieux_GENERAL Synchrony Fertility Seeds Anemophily Pollen |
| Zdroj: | Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC instname |
| ISSN: | 0012-9658 |
| Popis: | Copyright by the Ecological Society of America Masting is a reproductive strategy defined as the intermittent and synchronized production of large seed crops by a plant population. The pollination efficiency hypothesis proposes that masting increases pollination success in plants. Despite its general appeal, no previous studies have used long-term data together with population- and individual-level analyses to assess pollination efficiency between mast and non-mast events. Here we rigorously tested the pollination efficiency hypothesis in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), a long-lived monoecious, wind-pollinated species, using a data set on 217 trees monitored annually for 20 years. Relative investment in male and female function by individual trees did not vary between mast and non-mast years. At both the population and individual level, the rate of production of mature female cones relative to male strobili production was higher in mast than non-mast years, consistent with the predicted benefit of reproductive synchrony on reproductive success. In addition, at the individual level we found a higher conversion of unfertilized female conelets into mature female cones during a mast year compared to a non-mast year. Collectively, parallel results at the population and individual tree level provide robust evidence for the ecological, and potentially also evolutionary, benefits of masting through increased pollination efficiency. This research was supported by National Foundation Science grants BMS 75-14050, DEB 78-16798, BSR 8918478, and BSR 912065 to Y. B. Linhart and DEB 1120794 to K. A. Mooney. X. Moreira received financial support from Postdoctoral Fulbright/Spanish Ministry of Education grant program. L. Abdala-Roberts was funded by a GAANN fellowship and a UCMEXUS-CONACyT scholar- ship. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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