Benedek Veronika, Englert Péter
Department of Plant Taxonomy, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter Stny. 1/C, Budapest, Hungary.
Theory Biosci. 2019 Nov;138(2):215-221. doi: 10.1007/s12064-019-00274-6. Epub 2019 Feb 8.
Clonal plants grow horizontally by producing multiple physiological individuals (ramets). We studied clonal growth in a homogeneous environment using a dynamic spatial model based on a stochastic cellular automaton. We investigated different growth forms from the aspect of ramet mortality. Non-steady-state and quasi-steady-state cases were defined, and we determined the number of steps suitable for making a reliable difference between these two types of cases. This given number of steps was used when testing for the proportion of quasi-steady-state cases in 1000 repetitions. We also tested the efficiency of occupation in these cases. Our expectation was that higher occupation would be associated with lower ramet mortality. The results only partially verified this hypothesis. Though with increasing ramet mortality, the average number of ramets tended to decrease, it was not the lowest ramet mortality that resulted in the highest occupation. Our results showed that very low ramet mortality was unfavourable for the plant, as the spreading front and the area behind this front were so packed that the plant was not able to return and recolonize the vacated sites in the central area. This resulted in a lower proportion of quasi-steady-state cases and lower occupation in these cases. Our results may contribute to a deeper understanding of clonal plant growth and its limiting factors.
克隆植物通过产生多个生理个体（分株）进行水平生长。我们使用基于随机细胞自动机的动态空间模型，在均匀环境中研究了克隆生长。我们从分株死亡率的角度研究了不同的生长形式。定义了非稳态和准稳态情况，并确定了能够可靠区分这两种情况的步数。在对1000次重复实验中准稳态情况的比例进行测试时，使用了这个给定的步数。我们还测试了这些情况下的占据效率。我们的预期是，更高的占据率与更低的分株死亡率相关。结果仅部分验证了这一假设。尽管随着分株死亡率的增加，分株的平均数量趋于减少，但并非最低的分株死亡率导致最高的占据率。我们的结果表明，极低的分株死亡率对植物不利，因为扩展前沿及其后方区域过于拥挤，以至于植物无法返回并重新定殖中心区域的空位点。这导致准稳态情况的比例较低，且这些情况下的占据率也较低。我们的结果可能有助于更深入地理解克隆植物的生长及其限制因素。
