Next-gen plant clonal ecology

Plants with clonal growth can produce multiple potentially independent units, termed ramets. Clonal growth can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences, such as by increasing probability of reproduction, space monopolization, and regeneration after injury; and by permitting physiological integration of connected ramets. Although clonal growth is widespread among species and habitats, it has received relatively little attention in plant ecology. To introduce this special issue on clonal plant ecology, we first provide a brief background on the topic, noting its importance in areas ranging from evolution to the impacts of climate change on plant communities. We then focus on a set of pressing questions, to highlight both the obstacles and opportunities to more explicitly incorporate clonal growth in research on plant ecology and evolution

Determinants of Spatial Distribution in a Bee Community: Nesting Resources, Flower Resources, and Body Size

Understanding biodiversity distribution is a primary goal of community ecology. At a landscape scale, bee communities are affected by habitat composition, anthropogenic land use, and fragmentation. However, little information is available on local-scale spatial distribution of bee communities within habitats that are uniform at the landscape scale. We studied a bee community along with floral and nesting resources over a 32 km2 area of uninterrupted Mediterranean scrubland. Our objectives were (i) to analyze floral and nesting resource composition at the habitat scale. We ask whether these resources follow a geographical pattern across the scrubland at bee-foraging relevant distances; (ii) to analyze the distribution of bee composition across the scrubland. Bees being highly mobile organisms, we ask whether bee composition shows a homogeneous distribution or else varies spatially. If so, we ask whether this variation is irregular or follows a geographical pattern and whether bees respond primarily to flower or to nesting resources; and (iii) to establish whether body size influences the response to local resource availability and ultimately spatial distribution. We obtained 6580 specimens belonging to 98 species. Despite bee mobility and the absence of environmental barriers, our bee community shows a clear geographical pattern. This pattern is mostly attributable to heterogeneous distribution of small (<55 mg) species (with presumed smaller foraging ranges), and is mostly explained by flower resources rather than nesting substrates. Even then, a large proportion (54.8%) of spatial variability remains unexplained by flower or nesting resources. We conclude that bee communities are strongly conditioned by local effects and may exhibit spatial heterogeneity patterns at a scale as low as 500-1000 m in patches of homogeneous habitat. These results have important implications for local pollination dynamics and spatial variation of plant-pollinator networks