Clonality in the Anthropocene: Adaptation, Evolution, and Functioning of Clonal Plants from Individuals to Ecosystems
Description:... The Anthropocene, with the ongoing global changes in climate, land use, acidity, and content of toxins, represents the greatest recent challenges for plants. Clonal plants mainly reproduce vegetatively/asexually, and offspring remain attached to the parent at least until establishment. Despite limited gene recombination and genetic diversity, clonal plants are widely distributed and play significant roles in various ecosystems worldwide. Clonal traits, such as resource sharing and signaling between connected ramets, selective positioning of ramets, reallocation of stored energy/nutrients between connected ramets, initiation of meristem banks in response to clonal integration, and trade-offs between clonal and sexual reproduction, might help clonal plants adapt to different environmental conditions. The expression, fitness effects, and evolution of clonal traits can be influenced by environmental changes, which can be efficiently inherited and affects offspring performance, i.e., clonal parental effect. These adaptations may contribute to the survival, competition, invasiveness, and spread of clonal species in response to global climate change in the Anthropocene, from individuals to ecosystems.
Understanding the capacity of clonal species to survive and adjust to changing environments is requisite but limited. Specifically, the unique traits of clonal plants have been underestimated, and their contribution to population, community, and ecosystem dynamics is unclear. The roles of clonality in ecosystem functioning (e.g., carbon storage, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycling, water and soil conservation, and water purification) need to be further explored. The contribution of clonal growth in plant invasiveness and community invisibility also needs to be addressed. Hence, there is an urgent need for more in-depth studies investigating the adaptation and evolution, mechanisms, functioning, and approaches of plant clonality to global change and invasiveness at different levels.
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