IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0038288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Past and Present Influence the Foraging of Clonal Plants?

Author

Listed:
  • Philipe Louâpre
  • Anne-Kristel Bittebière
  • Bernard Clément
  • Jean-Sébastien Pierre
  • Cendrine Mony

Abstract

Clonal plants spreading horizontally and forming a network structure of ramets exhibit complex growth patterns to maximize resource uptake from the environment. They respond to spatial heterogeneity by changing their internode length or branching frequency. Ramets definitively root in the soil but stay interconnected for a varying period of time thus allowing an exchange of spatial and temporal information. We quantified the foraging response of clonal plants depending on the local soil quality sampled by the rooting ramet (i.e. the present information) and the resource variability sampled by the older ramets (i.e. the past information). We demonstrated that two related species, Potentilla reptans and P. anserina, responded similarly to the local quality of their environment by decreasing their internode length in response to nutrient-rich soil. Only P. reptans responded to resource variability by decreasing its internode length. In both species, the experience acquired by older ramets influenced the plastic response of new rooted ramets: the internode length between ramets depended not only on the soil quality locally sampled but also on the soil quality previously sampled by older ramets. We quantified the effect of the information perceived at different time and space on the foraging behavior of clonal plants by showing a non-linear response of the ramet rooting in the soil of a given quality. These data suggest that the decision to grow a stolon or to root a ramet at a given distance from the older ramet results from the integration of the past and present information about the richness and the variability of the environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Philipe Louâpre & Anne-Kristel Bittebière & Bernard Clément & Jean-Sébastien Pierre & Cendrine Mony, 2012. "How Past and Present Influence the Foraging of Clonal Plants?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-8, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0038288
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038288
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0038288
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0038288&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0038288?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yi-Wen Pan & Zhi-Xia Ying & Michael P Nobis & Anna M Hersperger & Chen Shi & Gang Ge, 2022. "Effect of soil spatial configuration on Trifolium repens varies with resource amount," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-11, January.
    2. Zhengwen Wang & Mark van Kleunen & Heinjo J During & Marinus J A Werger, 2013. "Root Foraging Increases Performance of the Clonal Plant Potentilla reptans in Heterogeneous Nutrient Environments," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-8, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0038288. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.