Phylogenetic Meta-Analysis of the Functional Traits of Clonal Plants Foraging in Changing Environments

Abstract

Foraging behavior, one of the adaptive strategies of clonal plants, has stimulated a tremendous amount of research. However, it is a matter of debate whether there is any general pattern in the foraging traits (functional traits related to foraging behavior) of clonal plants in response to diverse environments. We collected data from 97 published papers concerning the relationships between foraging traits (e.g., spacer length, specific spacer length, branch intensity and branch angle) of clonal plants and essential resources (e.g., light, nutrients and water) for plant growth and reproduction. We incorporated the phylogenetic information of 85 plant species to examine the universality of foraging hypotheses using phylogenetic meta-analysis. The trends toward forming longer spacers and fewer branches in shaded environments were detected in clonal plants, but no evidence for a relation between foraging traits and nutrient availability was detected, except that there was a positive correlation between branch intensity and nutrient availability in stoloniferous plants. The response of the foraging traits of clonal plants to water availability was also not obvious. Additionally, our results indicated that the foraging traits of stoloniferous plants were more sensitive to resource availability than those of rhizomatous plants. In consideration of plant phylogeny, these results implied that the foraging traits of clonal plants (notably stoloniferous plants) only responded to light intensity in a general pattern but did not respond to nutrient or water availability. In conclusion, our findings on the effects of the environment on the foraging traits of clonal plants avoided the confounding effects of phylogeny because we incorporated phylogeny into the meta-analysis.

The invasive stoloniferous clonal plant Alternanthera philoxeroides outperforms its co-occurring non-invasive functional counterparts in heterogeneous soil environments – invasion implications

“…Environmental heterogeneity is considered to favour clonal growth because stoloniferous clonal plants can display a variety of clonal functional traits that allow them to cope with environmental heterogeneity42. Clonal functional traits such as foraging behaviour, clonal integration and spatial division of labour are expected to benefit the performance of clonal plants in heterogeneous environments because they facilitate the exploitation of benign resources, internal exchange of resources and spread of risk91011.…”

Belowground plant functional ecology: Towards an integrated perspective

“…These abilities promote plants to explore and share nutrients under resource limitation. There are three hypotheses addressing this task: (a) clonal plants may actively forage for nutrients in heterogeneous soils by placing ramets preferentially in nutrient‐rich patches (He, Alpert, Yu, Zhang, & Dong, ; Xie, Song, Zhang, Pan, & Dong, ); (b) clonal plants can transport and relocate limiting resources from ramets growing in more benign (e.g., richer) patches to ramets found in more stressful (e.g., poorer) places through clonal spacers (Derner & Briske, ; Stuefer, ; Yu, Wang, He, Chu, & Dong, ); and (c) clonal plants harvest limiting soil resources over larger areas than nonclonal plants thanks to connections between their perennial rhizome and root systems (Jónsdóttir & Watson, ). In addition, clonal and nonclonal plants differ in their fine root architecture (Šmilauerová & Šmilauer, ) and growth plasticity (Weiser, Koubek, & Herben, ).…”

Biomass Allocation of Stoloniferous and Rhizomatous Plant in Response to Resource Availability: A Phylogenetic Meta-Analysis

“…When the study set up experiments on several treatment levels, each “treatment level” was paired with “control” to calculated effect size firstly and would be pooled later. Resource treatments (light intensity, nutrient level and water availability) used in the studies followed the explanation in Xie et al ( 2014 ). All data were extracted from tables or digitized from graphs with the software GetData v2.22 ( http://www.getdata-graph-digitizer.com ).…”

“…In this study, we considered ramet biomass as a measure of resource allocated to vegetative growth, and further divided into two parts: aboveground part (shoot, leaf, and stem) and belowground part (root). Because some studies found that stolons and rhizomes have partly different functions (Dong and de Kroon, 1994 ) and because rhizomatous plants are less plastic than stoloniferous plants in response to changes in resource availability (Dong and de Kroon, 1994 ; de Kroon and Hutchings, 1995 ; Xie et al, 2014 ), we considered that biomass allocated to reproduction consisted of two parts: biomass allocated to clonal reproduction (rhizomes or stolons) and biomass allocated to sexual reproduction (flowers, seeds, and fruits; Table 1 ). Additionally, we analyzed the allocation patterns from two perspectives: absolute and relative biomass (Reekie and Bazzaz, 1987 ).…”