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Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans

In freshwater ecosystems, shifts in hydrological regimes have profound effects on reproductive output (R), along with vegetative biomass (V) and survival of plants. Because reproductive allocation (RA) is allometric, it remains unclear whether the observed variation of RA in response to water level...

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Autores principales: Li, Lei, Bonser, Stephen P., Lan, Zhichun, Xu, Ligang, Chen, Jiakuan, Song, Zhiping
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5715065/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29203795
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-16719-1
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author Li, Lei
Bonser, Stephen P.
Lan, Zhichun
Xu, Ligang
Chen, Jiakuan
Song, Zhiping
author_facet Li, Lei
Bonser, Stephen P.
Lan, Zhichun
Xu, Ligang
Chen, Jiakuan
Song, Zhiping
author_sort Li, Lei
collection PubMed
description In freshwater ecosystems, shifts in hydrological regimes have profound effects on reproductive output (R), along with vegetative biomass (V) and survival of plants. Because reproductive allocation (RA) is allometric, it remains unclear whether the observed variation of RA in response to water level variability is due to fixed patterns of development or plasticity in the developmental trajectories. Here, we investigated shifts in RA of a submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans in response to water depth to test the hypothesis that allometric trajectories of RA are highly plastic. Plants were grown at three water depths (50, 100 and 150 cm) and measured after 26 weeks of growth. The relationships between R and V among treatments were compared. Deep water affected both biomass and number of fruits produced per plant, leading to less sexual reproduction. Plants in deep water started flowering at a smaller size and despite their small mature size, had a relatively high RA. Furthermore, these plants had a much lower log R–log V relationship than shallow- or intermediate-water plants. In conclusion, reproduction of V. natans is highly variable across water depth treatments, and variations in reproductive allometry represent different strategies under an important stress gradient for these freshwater angiosperms.
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spelling pubmed-57150652017-12-08 Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans Li, Lei Bonser, Stephen P. Lan, Zhichun Xu, Ligang Chen, Jiakuan Song, Zhiping Sci Rep Article In freshwater ecosystems, shifts in hydrological regimes have profound effects on reproductive output (R), along with vegetative biomass (V) and survival of plants. Because reproductive allocation (RA) is allometric, it remains unclear whether the observed variation of RA in response to water level variability is due to fixed patterns of development or plasticity in the developmental trajectories. Here, we investigated shifts in RA of a submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans in response to water depth to test the hypothesis that allometric trajectories of RA are highly plastic. Plants were grown at three water depths (50, 100 and 150 cm) and measured after 26 weeks of growth. The relationships between R and V among treatments were compared. Deep water affected both biomass and number of fruits produced per plant, leading to less sexual reproduction. Plants in deep water started flowering at a smaller size and despite their small mature size, had a relatively high RA. Furthermore, these plants had a much lower log R–log V relationship than shallow- or intermediate-water plants. In conclusion, reproduction of V. natans is highly variable across water depth treatments, and variations in reproductive allometry represent different strategies under an important stress gradient for these freshwater angiosperms. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5715065/ /pubmed/29203795 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-16719-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Li, Lei
Bonser, Stephen P.
Lan, Zhichun
Xu, Ligang
Chen, Jiakuan
Song, Zhiping
Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans
title Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans
title_full Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans
title_fullStr Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans
title_full_unstemmed Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans
title_short Water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte Vallisneria natans
title_sort water depth affects reproductive allocation and reproductive allometry in the submerged macrophyte vallisneria natans
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5715065/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29203795
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-16719-1
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