title: Ecological Consequences of Clonal Integration in Plants.
abstract: Clonal plants are widespread throughout the plant kingdom and dominate in diverse habitats. Spatiotemporal heterogeneity of environment is pervasive at multiple scales, even at scales relevant to individual plants. Clonal integration refers to resource translocation and information communication among the ramets of clonal plants. Due to clonal integration, clonal plant species possess a series of peculiar attributes: plasticity in response to local and non-local conditions, labor division with organ specialization for acquiring locally abundant resources, foraging behavior by selective placement of ramets in resource-rich microhabitats, and avoidance of intraclonal competition. Clonal integration has very profound ecological consequences for clonal plants. It allows them to efficiently cope with environmental heterogeneity, by alleviating local resource shortages, buffering environmental stresses and disturbances, influencing competitive ability, increasing invasiveness, and altering species composition and invasibility at the community level. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of research on the ecological consequences of plant clonal integration based on a large body of literature. We also attempt to propose perspectives for future research.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijing, China; National Science Library, Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijing, China.
authors.forename: Fenghong
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Environmental Research, Shandong University Jinan, China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijing, China; Key Laboratory of Hangzhou City for Ecosystem Protection and Restoration, Hangzhou Normal UniversityHangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dong
keywords: clonal plants; environmental heterogeneity; physiological integration; ramet/genet; resource translocation