The Effects of Fertilization and Heterogeneity on the Growth Strategies of Clonal Plants
Abstract
Theory predicts that in heterogeneous nutrient environments
species richness should increase due to increased niche
differentiation. However, the evidence to support this theory has
been very limited and in many cases not supported at all. This
project aims to determine why soil nutrient heterogeneity
treatments did not yield an increase in species richness in an
ongoing field experiment.
One potential reason is that the community is dominated by
several spreading clonal plant species. These plants may have
the ability to selectively forage for nutrients across patches. We
hypothesized that clonal growth strategies may have an effect
on the establishment of these species in the field experiment.
To test this idea we selected five species along a continuum of
growth strategies (phallanx guerilla) from the field and
transplanted them to the greenhouse in order to order to answer
the questions: (1) Do increasing nutrient levels have an effect
on the growth of clonal plant species along a spectrum of
growth strategies? (2) Will internode lengths vary within each
species along this spectrum at different nutrient levels? (3) Do
the differences in growth strategy correlate to the results of the
field experiment?