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Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability

Population sex ratios of many dioecious plants in nature are biased. This may be attributed to sexually different resource demands and adaptive capacity. In male-biasedPopulus, males often display stronger physiological adaptation than females. Interestingly, Populus and Salix, belonging to Salicace...

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Autores principales: Jiang, Hao, Zhang, Sheng, Lei, Yanbao, Xu, Gang, Zhang, Dan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4951494/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27489556
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2016.01064
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author Jiang, Hao
Zhang, Sheng
Lei, Yanbao
Xu, Gang
Zhang, Dan
author_facet Jiang, Hao
Zhang, Sheng
Lei, Yanbao
Xu, Gang
Zhang, Dan
author_sort Jiang, Hao
collection PubMed
description Population sex ratios of many dioecious plants in nature are biased. This may be attributed to sexually different resource demands and adaptive capacity. In male-biasedPopulus, males often display stronger physiological adaptation than females. Interestingly, Populus and Salix, belonging to Salicaceae, display an opposite biased sex ratio, especially in nutrient-poor environmental conditions. Do female willows have a greater tolerance to nutrient deficiency than males? In this study, we investigated the growth and defensive strategies of Salix paraplesia cuttings, which were grown with high and low soil fertility for about 140 days over one growing season. Results suggest that different strategies for biomass allocation may result in sexually different defense capacities and trade-offs between growth and defense. Females are likely to adopt radical strategies, overdrawing on available resources to satisfy both growth and defense, which seems to be more like a gamble compared with males. It is also suggested that females may have an extra mechanism to compensate for the investment in growth under nutrient-poor conditions. In summary, the results may help focus restoration efforts on sex selection such that a moderate increase in female willow quantity could increase the resistance and resilience of willow populations to early sporadic desertification.
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spelling pubmed-49514942016-08-03 Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability Jiang, Hao Zhang, Sheng Lei, Yanbao Xu, Gang Zhang, Dan Front Plant Sci Plant Science Population sex ratios of many dioecious plants in nature are biased. This may be attributed to sexually different resource demands and adaptive capacity. In male-biasedPopulus, males often display stronger physiological adaptation than females. Interestingly, Populus and Salix, belonging to Salicaceae, display an opposite biased sex ratio, especially in nutrient-poor environmental conditions. Do female willows have a greater tolerance to nutrient deficiency than males? In this study, we investigated the growth and defensive strategies of Salix paraplesia cuttings, which were grown with high and low soil fertility for about 140 days over one growing season. Results suggest that different strategies for biomass allocation may result in sexually different defense capacities and trade-offs between growth and defense. Females are likely to adopt radical strategies, overdrawing on available resources to satisfy both growth and defense, which seems to be more like a gamble compared with males. It is also suggested that females may have an extra mechanism to compensate for the investment in growth under nutrient-poor conditions. In summary, the results may help focus restoration efforts on sex selection such that a moderate increase in female willow quantity could increase the resistance and resilience of willow populations to early sporadic desertification. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-07-20 /pmc/articles/PMC4951494/ /pubmed/27489556 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2016.01064 Text en Copyright © 2016 Jiang, Zhang, Lei, Xu and Zhang. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Plant Science
Jiang, Hao
Zhang, Sheng
Lei, Yanbao
Xu, Gang
Zhang, Dan
Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability
title Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability
title_full Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability
title_fullStr Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability
title_full_unstemmed Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability
title_short Alternative Growth and Defensive Strategies Reveal Potential and Gender Specific Trade-Offs in Dioecious Plants Salix paraplesia to Nutrient Availability
title_sort alternative growth and defensive strategies reveal potential and gender specific trade-offs in dioecious plants salix paraplesia to nutrient availability
topic Plant Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4951494/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27489556
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2016.01064
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