Sakai Satoki
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Aoba, Sendai 980-8578, Japan e-mail:
Oecologia. 1998 Dec;117(3):391-395. doi: 10.1007/s004420050672.
Using four populations of the liliaceous perennial Erythronium japonicum, I examined the hypothesis that sex allocation will be female-biased if the duration of sink-limited growth of fruits, during which fruits grow exponentially, is long. I found that all marked fruits in each population had a period of sink-limited growth. Among the four populations, the mean length of sink-limited growth increased, and the mean dry mass ratio of the sum of the corolla and androecium/fruit decreased, in a consistent order. Thus, plants in populations where the duration of sink-limited growth was long allocated relatively more of their resources to their female functions. This result was consistent with the above hypothesis.
