Sexual dimorphism in resource allocation is expected to change during the life cycle of dioecious plants because of temporal differences between the sexes in reproductive investment. Given the potential for sex-specific differences in reproductive costs, resource availability may contribute to variation in reproductive allocation in females and males. Here, we used Rumex hastatulus, a dioecious...

Populations of Allium vineale commonly include individuals with very different allocation patterns to three modes of reproduction: sexual flowers, aerially produced asexual bulbils, and belowground asexual offsets. If selection is currently acting to maintain these different allocation patterns there must be a genetic basis for variation in allocation to these three reproductive modes. In addit...

Costs of reproduction due to resource allocation trade-offs have long been recognized as key forces in life history evolution, but little is known about their functional or genetic basis. Arabidopsis lyrata, a perennial relative of the annual model plant A. thaliana with a wide climatic distribution, has populations that are strongly diverged in resource allocation. In this study, we evaluated ...

Sexually selected traits are predicted to show condition dependence by capturing the genetic quality of its bearer. In separate-sexed organisms, this will ultimately translate into condition dependence of reproductive success of the sex that experiences sexual selection, which is typically the male. Such condition dependence of reproductive success is predicted to be higher in males than female...

An important biological feature of cyclic populations of voles and lemmings is phase-related changes in average body mass, with adults in high-density phases being 20-30% heavier than those in low-density phases of a cycle. This observation, called the "Chitty effect," is considered to be a ubiquitous feature of cyclic populations. It has been argued that understanding the Chitty effect is fund...

The pattern of resource allocation to reproduction vs. vegetative growth is a core component of a plant's life-history strategy. Plants can modify their biomass allocation patterns to adapt to contrasting environments. Meristems can have alternative fates to commit to vegetative growth, reproduction, or remaining inactive (dormant or senescent/dead). However, knowledge about whether meristem fa...

Reproductive skew models attempt to predict the fraction of reproduction contributed by each individual that participates in a communal brood. One potential limitation of these models is that individuals make a single, fixed decision about group membership and reproductive allocation at the beginning of the breeding period. While this is appropriate for animals that reproduce in a synchronous b...

Reproductive allocation is critically important for population maintenance and usually varies with not only environmental factors but also biotic ones. As a typical rhizome clonal plant in China's northern grasslands, Leymus chinensis usually dominates the steppe communities and grows in clonal patches. In order to clarify the sexual reproductive allocation of L. chinensis in the process of the...