Effect of rosette size, clonality and spatial distribution on the reproduction of Vriesea carinata (Bromeliaceae) in the Atlantic Forest of Paraná, southern Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACT Plant size and clonality are important traits for explaining the reproductive effort of clonal plants. Larger plants can invest more resources into reproduction, and clonality is known to increase reproductive effort. Moreover, reproductive effort is influenced by environmental variation, and so the spatial distribution of plants may affect plant reproductive effort. We investigated the effect of plant size, clonality and spatial distribution on the reproductive effort of Vriesea carinata in the Atlantic Forest in the state of Paraná, Brazil. We marked twenty individual plants and measured their rosette size, biomass and number, as well as rosette reproductive effort (number of flowers, fruits and seeds). We also evaluated the relationship between reproductive effort and spatial distribution of plants. Reproductive effort did not correlate with size, whereas greater clonal growth contributed to a lower reproductive effort because rosettes within clones that had more rosettes set fewer flowers. We found that plants growing closer to each other exhibited similar reproductive efforts independently of vegetative traits, because reproductive traits were spatially autocorrelated. In Vriesea carinata, the main drivers of reproductive effort are clonality, which decreases flower production, and spatial factors, which result in greater similarity in reproductive efforts among more proximate plants.

Keywords

• clonal growth
• morphological variation
• reproductive effort
• RNSM
• Vriesea