Growth experiments on the effects of the spatial structure and self-nonself discrimination of genets on growth dynamics and competition of clonal plants

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

I proposed a hypothesis that the spatial distribution of genetsand self-nonself discrimination alters growth dynamics and competition in clonal plantsand the hypothesis was tested by growth experiments. The experiment focused on rhizome yields of Japanese knotweed, Fallopia japonica, and had a two-way factorial randomized block design: the factors were rhizome densities and genet structure. The rhizome density treatment had two levels and the genet-structure treatment had three levels. There were six treatment combinations, which were replicated in 16 blocks. There were significant differences between the rhizome densities and marginally significant differences between the genet-structure treatments. The genet structure in a population of a clonal plant affected its rhizome biomass, which partially support our hypothesis.