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Ming Dong, Fei-Hai Yu, Peter Alpert, Ecological consequences of plant clonality, Annals of Botany, Volume 114, Issue 2, August 2014, Page 367, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcu137
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Clonal plants are those that reproduce asexually by means of vegetative offspring that remain attached to the parent, at least until they establish. Clonal plant species are widespread, dominate a variety of habitats and probably play key roles in the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem function and biological invasion. For example, many of the most invasive introduced plants in the world are clonal. This makes it important to deepen our understanding of the ecology of clonal plants, including effects of clonality on ecosystem function, species abundance, plant performance in different habitats, capacity for evolution and invasiveness. The six papers in this Highlight explore these effects.
The effects of clonality on ecosystem function have been under-studied. In a conceptual review, Cornelissen et al. (2014) discuss likely potential effects based on a response–effect trait framework, and call for research that links clonal traits to traits that affect carbon, nutrient and water cycling. In order to promote understanding of how clonality shapes species abundance, Herben et al. (2014) examine the relationships between plant traits and species abundance in 836 perennial, herbaceous species in Central Europe. Their results show that clonal growth traits explain a substantial proportion of variation in abundance, and that capacity for clonal growth and lateral expansion are positively correlated with abundance at both regional and local scales.
