Plant size and allocation to reproduction for plant demography

Abstract

Stage-based population models are an important tool for quantifying the influence of biotic and abiotic factors on populations. Within studies of plant demography and life history, measuring and predicting biomass is an essential tool used to better understand a plant’s health and reproductive success. However, measuring biomass is inherently destructive. This study assessed multiple nondestructive measures of plant size to determine which best predicted plant biomass for four species of subalpine wildflowers. We also examined whether allocation to reproductive biomass varied across these species. The four species, Delphinium nuttallianum, Hydrophyllum fendleri, Potentilla pulcherrima, and Erigeron speciosus, each chosen for their different life history strategies, were used to study possible predictors of plant biomass in subalpine meadows around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado. As each plant has a slightly different morphology, different measures of plant size were used across species, such as leaf number or stalk length. Randomly selected individuals of each species were measured, excavated, and dried and weighed for biomass. Most measures of plant size predicted all types of biomass. However, for three of the four species, the best predictor of above-ground biomass differed from total biomass, suggesting that researchers may not be able to depend on just above- ground biomass to represent plant size. Simultaneously, because almost all measures of plant size predicted biomass to some degree, there is a trade-off between accuracy and having a general representation of biomass. The proportion of biomass allocated to reproduction varied across species and was highest in the earliest flowering species, D. nuttallianum, perhaps because it had little time to grow before reproducing. The findings of this study can inform future research on the relationship between different plant characteristics and the biomass of different wildflower species, as well as future investigations into the life history of these subalpine plants.

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