Evolution of masting in plants is linked to investment in low tissue mortality

Abstract

Masting, a variable and synchronized variation in reproductive effort is a prevalent strategy among perennial plants, but the factors leading to interspecific differences in masting remain unclear. Here, we investigate interannual patterns of reproductive investment in 517 species of terrestrial perennial plants, including herbs, graminoids, shrubs, and trees. We place these patterns in the context of the plants’ phylogeny, habitat, form and function. Our findings reveal that masting is widespread across the plant phylogeny. Nonetheless, reversion from masting to regular seed production is also common. While interannual variation in seed production is highest in temperate and boreal zones, our analysis controlling for environment and phylogeny indicates that masting is more frequent in species that invest in tissue longevity. Our modeling exposes masting-trait relationships that would otherwise remain hidden and provides large-scale evidence that the costs of delayed reproduction play a significant role in the evolution of variable reproduction in plants.

Relatives reproduce in synchrony: kinship and individual condition shape intraspecific variation in masting phenotype

“…The magnitude of intraspecific variation in masting patterns seems substantial [8,10,25,26] and may not be smaller than the variation observed among populations or species [10,39,72]. Perhaps plugging in the individual variation in masting metrics is key to increasing the low explanatory power of models that aim to explain the masting variation across environments [72][73][74]. The advocating for the importance of intraspecific variation echoes the functional trait literature in which unlocking variation at the level of individuals has been long recognized as essential for sorting variation at higher organizational levels [75,76].…”