Death without sex—the ‘problem of the small’ and selection for reproductive economy in flowering plants

By Lonnie W. Aarssen. Evolutionary Ecology, 2008

120 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Keeping plant shrinkage in the demographic loop (2010, background): “First, shrinkagemight affect plant fitness because size, its best predictor (Silvertown & Charlesworth 2001), is often correlatedwith reproductive output and probability of survival (Harper 1977; but see Aarsen 2008).”
The allometry of reproduction within plant populations (2009, result): “This pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that smaller species are more ‘reproductively economical’ than larger species (Aarssen 2008).”
Clonal growth and sexual reproduction: tradeoffs and environmental constraints (2015, background): “It has been hypothesised that clonality evolved as such a response in smaller plants that fail to reproduce sexually under competition from taller neighbours, either conspecifi c or heterospecifi c (Aarssen 2008).”
Effects of disturbance frequency and severity on plant traits: An assessment across a temperate flora (2018, background): “Moreover, the height at maturity in (temperate) herbs is constrained by the necessity of building their whole shoots anew every year (Aarssen, 2008; Chambers & Aarssen, 2009; Yan, Milla, Aarssen, & Wang, 2012).”
Regeneration: an overlooked aspect of trait‐based plant community assembly models (2016, background): “Clonality is especially prevalent in herbaceous species (relative to woody; Aarssen 2008) and in temperate, aquatic and arctic ecosystems”