Sexual systems and measures of occupancy and abundance in an annual plant: testing the metapopulation model.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_80878EF0CFCE
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Title
Sexual systems and measures of occupancy and abundance in an annual plant: testing the metapopulation model.
Journal
American Naturalist
Author(s)
Eppley S.M., Pannell J.R.
ISSN
1537-5323 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0003-0147
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2007
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
169
Number
1
Pages
20-28
Language
english
Abstract
The need for reproductive assurance during dispersal, along with the pressure of local mate competition, means that the importance of frequent or repeated colonization is implicit in the sexual-system evolution literature. However, to date there have been few empirical tests of the association between colonization and the sexual system in plants. Here we provide such a test by comparing occupancy and abundance of populations of the European plant Mercurialis annua across regions characterized by different sexual systems. Specifically, we predicted that monomorphic, hermaphroditic populations, which are thought to have evolved under selection for reproductive assurance during repeated bouts of colonization, would be smaller and their suitable habitat less frequently occupied than dimorphic populations, where males co-occur with either females or hermaphrodites. We show that both of these predictions are upheld. We evaluate our results against competing hypotheses for the occupancy-abundance relationship and conclude that they are most consistent with the metapopulation model for sexual-system variation in M. annua.
Keywords
Ecosystem, Euphorbiaceae/physiology, Reproduction/physiology, Spain
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
20/09/2011 7:41
Last modification date
20/08/2019 14:41
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