Wang Lan-Hui, Si Jing, Luo Fang-Li, Dong Bi-Cheng, Yu Fei-Hai
School of Economics and Management, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China.
Department of Arts and Crafts, Wuhan No. 2 Vocational Education Center School, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Front Plant Sci. 2022 Sep 7;13:872065. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.872065. eCollection 2022.
Parental environmental effects can be a rapid and effective means for clonal plants in response to temporally or spatially varying environments. However, few studies have quantitatively measured the ecological significance of parental effects in aquatic clonal plants. In this study, we developed a two-generation (parent-offspring) growth model to examine the parental effects of nitrogen (N) conditions on summed and mean performance of clonal offspring of one wetland species . We also examined the role of survival status and developmental stage of clonal offspring in the consequence of parental effects in aquatic clonal plants. Our results indicated direct evidence that (1) there were significant non-linear correlations between the performance of parental plants and initial status of clonal offspring (i.e., the mass and number of clonal propagules); (2) parental N effects on the summed performance of clonal offspring were content-dependent (i.e., there were significant interactions between parental and offspring N effects), while parental effects on the mean performance of offspring were independent of offspring conditions; (3) parental effects mainly occurred at the early development stage of clonal offspring, and then gradually declined at the late stage; (4) the context-dependent parental effects on the summed performance of clonal offspring gradually strengthened when offspring survival was high. The mathematical models derived from the experimental data may help researchers to not only deeply explore the ecological significance of parental environmental effects in aquatic clonal plants, but also to reveal the importance of potential factors that have been often neglected in empirical studies.
亲本环境效应可能是克隆植物应对时间或空间变化环境的一种快速有效的方式。然而，很少有研究定量测量水生克隆植物中亲本效应的生态意义。在本研究中，我们建立了一个两代（亲本-子代）生长模型，以研究氮（N）条件对一种湿地物种克隆子代的总和及平均表现的亲本效应。我们还研究了克隆子代的存活状态和发育阶段在水生克隆植物亲本效应结果中的作用。我们的结果表明有直接证据表明：（1）亲本植物的表现与克隆子代的初始状态（即克隆繁殖体的质量和数量）之间存在显著的非线性相关性；（2）亲本氮对克隆子代总和表现的影响取决于含量（即亲本和子代氮效应之间存在显著的相互作用），而亲本对子代平均表现的影响与子代条件无关；（3）亲本效应主要发生在克隆子代的早期发育阶段，然后在后期逐渐下降；（4）当子代存活率高时，亲本对克隆子代总和表现的背景依赖性效应逐渐增强。从实验数据得出的数学模型可能有助于研究人员不仅深入探索水生克隆植物中亲本环境效应的生态意义，还能揭示实证研究中经常被忽视的潜在因素的重要性。
