Within-and among-year germination in Sonoran Desert winter annuals: bet hedging and predictive germination in a variable environment

In variable environments, organisms must have strategies to ensure fitness as conditions change. For plants, germination can time emergence with favourable conditions for later growth and reproduction (predictive germination), spread the risk of unfavourable conditions (bet hedging) or both (integra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2016-10, Vol.19 (10), p.1209-1218
Main Authors: Gremer, Jennifer R., Kimball, Sarah, Venable, D. Lawrence
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bet hedging
Biological Evolution
density dependence
desert annuals
Desert Climate
dormancy
Ecosystem
evolutionarily stable strategies
Germination
Germination - physiology
Hedging
integrated strategies
Models, Biological
Plants - classification
population dynamic models
predictive plasticity
Seasons
seed bank
Seeds - physiology
within-year germination
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Summary:In variable environments, organisms must have strategies to ensure fitness as conditions change. For plants, germination can time emergence with favourable conditions for later growth and reproduction (predictive germination), spread the risk of unfavourable conditions (bet hedging) or both (integrated strategies). Here we explored the adaptive value of within‐ and among‐year germination timing for 12 species of Sonoran Desert winter annual plants. We parameterised models with long‐term demographic data to predict optimal germination fractions and compared them to observed germination. At both temporal scales we found that bet hedging is beneficial and that predicted optimal strategies corresponded well with observed germination. We also found substantial fitness benefits to varying germination timing, suggesting some degree of predictive germination in nature. However, predictive germination was imperfect, calling for some degree of bet hedging. Together, our results suggest that desert winter annuals have integrated strategies combining both predictive plasticity and bet hedging.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.12655