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NCEAS
NCEAS Project 12349
Addressing a Long-Standing Paradox: How Do Dioecious Plant Species Persist?
- Queenborough, Simon
| Activity | Dates | Further Information |
|---|---|---|
| Postdoctoral Fellowship | 1st January 2010—31st December 2011 | Participant List |
Abstract
Breeding system impacts on the ecology and evolution of coexisting plant species. Perhaps the best example of such impacts is exemplified by dioecious plant species (those with separate male and female individuals), populations of which suffer a fitness cost because of the lower number of seed-bearing stems relative to ecologically similar hermaphroditic species. To maintain per capita growth rates that are equal to their hermaphroditic counterparts, female individuals in dioecious populations must exhibit one or more fitness advantages, which might include: higher fecundity, higher rates of offspring recruitment, earlier ages of reproduction, more frequent reproduction, or higher quality offspring. The fitness advantages predicted to have evolved in dioecious species have remained elusive because of inadequate data and a failure to fully integrate phylogeny and dynamic demographic and distribution data with other species functional traits. This study will use a newly developed functional-trait database of plant reproductive traits and recently-available rigorously collected spatially-explicit plant demographic data on >6,000 species and >3,000,000 individuals to examine the associations among breeding systems, demography and functional traits in a phylogenetically informed way in order to seek evidence for fitness advantages in dioecious taxa.
