Author Identifiers

Paul Lavery

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5162-273X

Kathryn McMahon

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4355-6247

Publication Date

2016

Document Type

Dataset

Publisher

Dryad

School or Research Centre

School of Science

Description

Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in flowering occur in many plant species with abiotic pollination and may confer fitness advantages through mechanisms such as predator satiation or pollination efficiency. Environmental factors such as light quality or quantity and temperature play an important role in inducing synchronisation on wide geographic scales. On a smaller geographic scale, external factors such as resource availability and herbivory are theorised to trigger flowering, while genetic factors may also play an important role. In this study, we assessed the importance of ecological and genetic factors in shaping seascape-level spatial heterogeneity in flowering of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica. By investigating spatially close sites ( 20 km) with similar seascape configurations and depth, we assume that major environmental drivers (temperature and light) were equivalent. We assessed four ecological factors (productivity, leaf nitrogen and carbon content and herbivory) and three genetic factors (heterozygosity, relatedness and clonality) to assess three hypotheses for synchronised flowering in P. oceanica: (1) clone synchronisation (internal clock hypothesis), (2) variation in nutrient availability, potentially caused by spatial heterogeneity in herbivory rates or nutrient translocation via clonal integration (resource budget hypothesis) or (3) kin selection and sibling synchronisation. Internal relatedness and heterozygosity had a significant positive effect on the abundance of flowers. Moreover, productivity and genotypic richness (clonality) were negatively associated with flower density, although at a lower level of significance. In addition we found that clones were almost exclusively shared among mass-flowering patches and patches without mass-flowering, respectively. Synthesis. The results shed new light on seagrass flowering patterns and on the mechanisms of flower synchronisation at the patch level within a wider spatial scale. We found support for the kin selection hypothesis and indirect evidence for the resource budget hypothesis. Thus a combination of mainly genetic but also ecological factors causes the observed heterogeneous flowering patterns in Posidonia oceanica seascapes. In addition, we found a strong positive relationship between the number of flowers and heterozygosity, adding evidence to the controversial association between heterozygosity and fitness when a limited number of loci are used. To our knowledge, this study is the first to link both ecological and genetic factors with flower abundance in a species with a presumed masting strategy.

Additional Information

This dataset was originally published at:

https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sj6dv

DOI

10.5061/dryad.sj6dv

Language

Eng

File Format(s)

Text Document

File Size

2 KB

Viewing Instructions

This file contains information on the ecological data collected at each patch at the three locations. In particular flower and shoot density per 40x40cm quadrat and data on herbivory, production and C and N content are provided.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 License.

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