Collaborative Research: Competitive Ability of Clonal Plants--The Roles of Integration and Ramet Aggregation in Structuring Plant Communities

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Goldberg/Gough DEB-9974296/DEB-9974284This study will explore the influence of two important clonal attributes, clonal integration and ramet aggregation, on the outcome of interspecific interactions among clonal plants. It will develop a series of predictions about how these two characteristics influence both individual-level competitive ability and overall community structure. This will be done using a series of experiments using eight clonal species typical of calcareous peatland communities of southeastern Michigan. It is hoped that the work outlined in this proposal will integrate the currently disparate research areas of field studies of plant competition, clonal integration and foraging and theoretical studies of community-level consequences of spatial arrangement of individuals. This project will contribute to our knowledge of the ecology of clonal plants and to our understanding of how competition at the individual level is translated into species patterns at the community level.