Abstract
Despite being central concepts for life history theory, little is known about how reproductive effort and costs vary with individual age once plants have started to reproduce. We conducted a 5-year field study and estimated age-dependent reproductive effort for both sexes in the extraordinarily long-lived dioecious plant Borderea pyrenaica. We also evaluated costs of reproduction on vital rates for male and female plants, both by examining effects of differences in individual reproductive effort under natural conditions, and by conducting a flower removal experiment, aimed at decreasing reproductive effort. Reproductive effort was fairly constant and independent of age for males, which may reflect a strategy of adjusting overall reproductive output by spreading reproduction over the life course. Females had a higher total effort, which first increased and then decreased with age. The latter may be a response to an increasing reproductive value—an inverse of a terminal investment—or a sign of reproductive senescence due to an age-related physiological decline. Seed production was lower in plants with higher previous reproductive effort and this effect increased with age. We found no evidence for costs of reproduction on other vital rates for either sex. Experimental flower removal only resulted in progressively more negative effects on flower production in older male plants, whereas female vital rates were unaffected. Overall, this study demonstrates that not only sex, but also age influences resource allocation trade-offs and, thus, plant life history evolution.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Owen Jones for comments on a previous version of the manuscript and would like to give particular thanks to the Regional Government of Aragón for permission to work with a plant of “special interest”. DAS and JPD acknowledge funding from the Max Planck Society. MBG acknowledges PERDIVER project (BBVA Foundation) and JPD acknowledges the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) for funding during the analysis and writing stages.
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MBG and JE designed the experiments. MBG carried out the field work. All authors conceived the specific study questions. DAS and JPD conducted the statistical analyses. DAS wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all other authors contributed substantially with revisions.
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Communicated by Monica Geber.
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Sherman, D.A., Dahlgren, J.P., Ehrlén, J. et al. Sex and the cost of reproduction through the life course of an extremely long-lived herb. Oecologia 191, 369–375 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-019-04491-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-019-04491-0