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United we stand, divided we fall: a meta-analysis of experiments on clonal integration and its relationship to invasiveness

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Abstract

Many ecosystems are dominated by clonal plants. Among the most distinctive characteristics of clonal plants is their potential for clonal integration (i.e. the translocation of resources between interconnected ramets), suggesting that integration may play a role in their success. However, a general synthesis of effects of clonal integration on plant performance is lacking. We conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of clonal integration on biomass production and asexual reproduction of the whole clone, the recipient part (i.e. the part of a clone that imports resources) and the donor part (i.e. the part of a clone that exports resources). The final dataset contained 389 effect sizes from 84 studies covering 57 taxa. Overall, clonal integration increased performance of recipient parts without decreasing that of donor parts, and thus increased performance of whole clones. Among the studies and taxa considered, the benefits of clonal integration did not differ between two types of experimental approaches, between stoloniferous and rhizomatous growth forms, between directions of resource translocation (from younger to older ramet or vice versa), or among types of translocated resources (water, nutrients and carbohydrates). Clonal taxa with larger benefits of integration on whole-clone performance were not more invasive globally, but taxa in which recipient parts in unfavorable patches benefited more from integration were. Our results demonstrate general performance benefits of clonal integration, at least in the short term, and suggest that clonal integration contributes to the success of clonal plants.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Anna Aguilera, Liu Jian and Xiao Ke-Yan for providing data, and Dr. Laura Gough and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This research was supported by the External Cooperation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant GJHZ0904 to FHY) and the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant 31070371 to FHY), and the Sino-Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation (Grant JRP IZLC3 123973 to M.v.K. and M.F.). The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest and the study complies with the current laws of China.

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Correspondence to Fei-Hai Yu or Ming Dong.

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Communicated by Laura Gough.

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Song, YB., Yu, FH., Keser, L.H. et al. United we stand, divided we fall: a meta-analysis of experiments on clonal integration and its relationship to invasiveness. Oecologia 171, 317–327 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2430-9

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