期刊
ECOLOGY
卷 95, 期 4, 页码 801-807出版社
ECOLOGICAL SOC AMER
DOI: 10.1890/13-1720.1
关键词
Pinus ponderosa; wind pollination; sex allocation; masting; seed cones; pollination success; pollen; trade-off; Boulder Canyon, Colorado, USA; synchrony
类别
资金
- National Foundation Science [BMS 75-14050, DEB 78-16798, BSR 8918478, BSR 912065, DEB 1120794]
- Postdoctoral Fulbright/Spanish Ministry of Education grant program
- GAANN fellowship
- UCMEXUS-CONACyT scholarship
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1120794] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Masting is a reproductive strategy defined as the intermittent and synchronized production of large seed crops by a plant population. The pollination efficiency hypothesis proposes that masting increases pollination success in plants. Despite its general appeal, no previous studies have used long-term data together with population- and individual-level analyses to assess pollination efficiency between mast and non-mast events. Here we rigorously tested the pollination efficiency hypothesis in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), a long-lived monoecious, wind-pollinated species, using a data set on 217 trees monitored annually for 20 years. Relative investment in male and female function by individual trees did not vary between mast and non-mast years. At both the population and individual level, the rate of production of mature female cones relative to male strobili production was higher in mast than non-mast years, consistent with the predicted benefit of reproductive synchrony on reproductive success. In addition, at the individual level we found a higher conversion of unfertilized female conelets into mature female cones during a mast year compared to a non-mast year. Collectively, parallel results at the population and individual tree level provide robust evidence for the ecological, and potentially also evolutionary, benefits of masting through increased pollination efficiency.
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