Acorn production by oaks in central coastal California: variation within and among years

We measured acorn production by individual oaks of five different species at Hastings Reservation in central coastal California between 1980 and 1991. Variation in acorn production was considerable both within and among years and was generally uncorrelated between species. Compared to expected value...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 1994, Vol.75 (1), p.99-109
Main Authors: Koenig, Walter D., Mumme, Ronald L., Carmen, William J., Stanback, Mark T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural resources
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Autocorrelation
Biological and medical sciences
california
californie
Coastal ecology
Demecology
evolucion
evolution
Forest ecology
fruits
frutas
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Plant reproduction
Plants and fungi
polinizacion
pollination
pollinisation
Predators
Quercus
Satiation
Seed production
Species
Statistical variance
Trees
Wind pollination
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Summary:We measured acorn production by individual oaks of five different species at Hastings Reservation in central coastal California between 1980 and 1991. Variation in acorn production was considerable both within and among years and was generally uncorrelated between species. Compared to expected values, variance within years in the size of acorn crops was small, while variance among years was high. Crop failures occurred fairly frequently and large crops in successive years were observed, but not more than expected by chance. Individual trees masted at species-specific intervals, but these patterns did not result in regular masting cycles at the production level. We compared these patterns to predictions of four hypotheses for the evolution of seed production patterns. Observations did not support the hypotheses that production patterns track resource availability (the "resource matching" hypothesis) or that they have evolved to attract seed dispersers (the "seed dispersal" hypothesis). However, they are generally consistent with two additional hypotheses, that masting in these wind-pollinated species evolved because of a proportional increase in fertilization and seed set during mast years (the "wind pollination" hypothesis) and that masting has evolved to maximize the probability of avoiding predation via predator satiation (the "predator satiation" hypothesis).
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.2307/1939386