The optimal balance between sexual and asexual reproduction in variable environments: a systematic review

Abstract

Many plant species have two modes of reproduction: sexual and asexual. Both modes of reproduction have often been viewed as adaptations to temporally or spatially variable environments. The plant should adjust partitioning to match changes in the estimated success of the two reproductive modes. Perennial plants showed that favorable habitats in soil nutrients or water content tend to promote clonal growth over sexual reproduction. In contrast, under high light-quantity conditions, clonal plants tend to allocate more biomass to sexual reproduction and less to clonal propagation. On the other hand, plants with chasmogamous and cleistogamous flowers provides with a greater tendency of the opportunity to ensure some seed set in any stressful environmental conditions such as low light, low soil nutrients, or low soil moisture. It is considered that vegetative reproduction has high competitive ability and is the major means to expand established population of perennial plants, whereas cleistogamous reproduction is insurance to persist in stressful sites due to being strong. Chasmogamous reproduction mainly enhances established and new population. Therefore, the functions of sexual and asexual propagules of perennial or annual plants differ from each other. These traits of propagule thus determine its success at a particular region of any environmental gradients. Eventually, if environmental resources or stress levels change in either space or time, species composition will probably also change. The reason based on which the plants differ with respect to favored reproduction modes in each environmental condition, may be involved in their specific realized niche.

Shade avoidance and reproductive strategies of an early successional species Penthorum chinense in relation to shade treatments

“…In P. chinense , seed mass fraction and sexually reproductive organ mass fraction decreased as light quantity decreased from FL to ML. Perennial plants generally increase allocation to sexual reproduction in high light (Yang & Kim ). The allocation to sexual reproduction is larger under high light in Aster acuminatus (Pitelka et al .…”

Trifolium polymorphum: an amphicarpic species with an interesting reproductive biology

“…Although amphicarpic, T. polymorphum invests early in asexual reproduction through the production of storage roots. This resource partition indicates that asexual reproduction is highly competitive (Yang and Kim 2016) and is more common where the population is already established, thus ensuring the preservation of the parental genotype as a result of storage-root regrowth, so that plants may persist vegetatively year after year without the need of regeneration by seeds. However, long periods of asexual reproduction may reduce the dispersal capacity of the species over large distances and affect genetic diversity within population (McLellan et al 1997).…”

Correction to: The optimal balance between sexual and asexual reproduction in variable environments: a systematic review

“…After publication of the original article (Yang and Kim 2016), it was brought to our attention that the phrase 'Most of the clonal plants mainly rely on clonal propagation and exhibit lower rate of sexual reproduction (Eckert 2002)' in "Background" section should be deleted.…”