Tropical understory piper shrubs maintain high levels of genotypic diversity despite frequent asexual recruitment

Eloisa Lasso, James W. Dalling, Eldredge Bermingham

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Many plant species have the capacity to regenerate asexually by resprouting from stem and leaf fragments. In the pan-tropical shrub genus Piper, this tendency is thought to be higher in shade-tolerant than light-demanding species, and to represent a trade-off with annual seed production. Here we use molecular markers to identify clones in five Piper species varying in light requirements. We test predictions that (i) asexual recruitment success is highest in shade-tolerant species, and (ii) that consequently, shade-tolerant species are characterized by lower genotypic diversity than light-demanding Piper. We found that two shade-tolerant Piper species recruited asexually more frequently (36-42% of sampled shoots were of asexual origin) than, two light-demanding and one shade-tolerant species (0-26%). Furthermore, as predicted, genotypic diversity was negatively correlated with the frequency of asexual recruitment in the population. Nonetheless, genotypic diversity of Piper was high compared with other clonal plants. The proportion of unique genotypes found per population ranged from 0.58 to 1.0 and the genotypic Simpson's diversity ranged from 0.93 to 1.0 for all five species. Our results suggest that even though asexual reproduction plays an important role in maintaining local populations of Piper in the understory, it does not seem to reduce genotypic diversity to levels that will threaten these species ability to respond to environmental change.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)35-43
Number of pages9
JournalBiotropica
Volume44
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2012

Keywords

  • AFLP
  • Barro Colorado Island
  • Clonal reproduction
  • Distinguishable genotypes
  • Panama
  • Piperacea
  • Tropical wet forest
  • Vegetative reproduction

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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