Reproduction and vegetative growth in the dioeciou

Authors: Juan Wang Chunyu Zhang Klaus V Gadow Yanxia Cheng Xiuhai Zhao

Publish Date: 2015/03/18

Volume: 28, Issue: 2, Pages: 111-119

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Abstract

The tradeoff between reproduction vegetative growth and maintenance is a major issue in the life history of an organism and a record of the process which is producing the largest possible number of living offspring by natural selection Dioecious species afford an excellent opportunity for detecting such possible tradeoffs in resource allocation In this study we selected the dioecious shrub Acer barbinerve to examine possible tradeoffs between reproduction and vegetative growth in both genders at different modular levels during three successive years Reproductive and vegetative biomass values were assessed during successive years to evaluate their intraannual and interannual tradeoffs These tradeoffs were examined at shoot branch and shrub modular levels in Acer barbinerve shrubs An intraannual tradeoff was detected at the shoot level for both genders in 2011 and 2012 Both males and females showed a negative correlation between reproduction and vegetative growth but this was more prominent in males For the females of the species interannual tradeoffs were only found at branch and shrub levels Slightly negative correlations in females were detected between the reproduction in 2012 and the reproduction in the two previous years The gender ratio was significantly male biased during the three successive years of our investigation Females had higher mortality rates in the larger diameter classes both in 2011 and 2012 This study revealed a clear tradeoff between reproduction and vegetative growth in Acer barbinerve but results varied between males and females The degree of autonomy of the different modular levels may affect the ability to detect such tradeoffsThis work is supported by the 12th fiveyear National Science and Technology plan of China 2012BAD22B0203 the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of Ministry of Education of China NCET120781 the National Basic Research Program of China 973 Program 2011CB403203 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China 31200315

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