Simpson Beryl B
Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution, 20560, Washington, D.C., USA.
Oecologia. 1977 Sep;27(3):203-226. doi: 10.1007/BF00347467.
A comparison of the floral syndromes, flower biomasses, pollen and total sugar production of the dominant perennial species of two climatically similar but disjunct desert scrub ecosystems was made to assess the degree of convergence in breeding systems. Results indicate that the dominants at the northern site in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson Arizona, USA, possess more diverse floral types, utilize more reproductive methods, produce a greater annual biomass of flowers, provide more rewards for potential pollinators and employ a wider array of pollen vectors than those at the southern site near Andalgalá, Catamarca, Argentina. The discrepancies in these features can be best explained in terms of the differences in the annual dispersion of rainfall at the two sites. However, when compared to the dominant species of two Mediterranean scrub ecosystems, the breeding systems of the dominants of the desert scrub sites proved to be more similar to one another than to those of a neighboring but different ecosystem type.
对两个气候相似但相互隔离的沙漠灌丛生态系统中优势多年生植物的花综合征、花生物量、花粉和总糖产量进行了比较，以评估繁殖系统的趋同程度。结果表明，位于美国亚利桑那州图森附近索诺兰沙漠北部地点的优势植物，比位于阿根廷卡塔马卡省安达加尔拉附近南部地点的优势植物拥有更多样化的花型，采用更多的繁殖方式，每年产生的花生物量更大，为潜在传粉者提供更多回报，并且使用更广泛的花粉传播媒介。这些特征的差异可以用两个地点年降雨量分布的差异来最好地解释。然而，与两个地中海灌丛生态系统的优势物种相比，沙漠灌丛地点优势植物的繁殖系统彼此之间比与相邻但不同生态系统类型的繁殖系统更相似。
