Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, volume 286, issue 1911, pages 20190955

Effects of neighbour location and nutrient distributions on root foraging behaviour of the common sunflower

Publication typeJournal Article
Publication date2019-09-18
scimago Q1
wos Q1
SJR1.692
CiteScore7.9
Impact factor3.8
ISSN09628452, 14712954
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Medicine
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
General Immunology and Microbiology
General Environmental Science
Abstract

Plants regularly encounter patchily distributed soil nutrients. A common foraging response is to proliferate roots within high-quality patches. The influence of the social environment on this behaviour has been given limited attention, despite important fitness consequences of competition for soil resources among plants. Using the common sunflower (Helianthus annuusL.), we compared localized root proliferation in a high-quality patch by plants grown alone to that of plants in two different social environments: with a neighbouring plant sharing equal access to the high-quality patch, and with a neighbouring plant present but farther from the high-quality patch such that the focal individual was in closer proximity to the high-quality patch. Sunflowers grown alone proliferated more roots within high-nutrient patches than lower-nutrient soil. Plants decreased root proliferation within a high-nutrient patch when it was equidistant to a neighbour. Conversely, plants increased root proliferation when they were in closer proximity to the patch relative to a nearby neighbour. Such contingent responses may allow sunflowers to avoid competition in highly contested patches, but to also pre-empt soil resources from neighbours when they have better access to a high-quality patch. We also compared patch occupancy by sunflowers grown alone with two equidistant high-quality patches to occupancy by sunflowers grown with two high-quality patches and a neighbour. Plants grown with a neighbour decreased root length within shared patches but did not increase root length within high-quality patches they were in closer proximity to, perhaps because resource pre-emption may be less important for individuals when resources are more abundant. These results show that nutrient foraging responses in plants can be socially contingent, and that plants may account for the possibility of pre-empting limited resources in their foraging decisions.

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Ljubotina M. K., Cahill J. F. Effects of neighbour location and nutrient distributions on root foraging behaviour of the common sunflower // Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2019. Vol. 286. No. 1911. p. 20190955.
GOST all authors (up to 50) Copy
Ljubotina M. K., Cahill J. F. Effects of neighbour location and nutrient distributions on root foraging behaviour of the common sunflower // Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2019. Vol. 286. No. 1911. p. 20190955.
RIS |
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RIS Copy
TY - JOUR
DO - 10.1098/rspb.2019.0955
UR - https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0955
TI - Effects of neighbour location and nutrient distributions on root foraging behaviour of the common sunflower
T2 - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
AU - Ljubotina, Megan K.
AU - Cahill, James F.
PY - 2019
DA - 2019/09/18
PB - The Royal Society
SP - 20190955
IS - 1911
VL - 286
SN - 0962-8452
SN - 1471-2954
ER -
BibTex |
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BibTex (up to 50 authors) Copy
@article{2019_Ljubotina,
author = {Megan K. Ljubotina and James F. Cahill},
title = {Effects of neighbour location and nutrient distributions on root foraging behaviour of the common sunflower},
journal = {Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences},
year = {2019},
volume = {286},
publisher = {The Royal Society},
month = {sep},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0955},
number = {1911},
pages = {20190955},
doi = {10.1098/rspb.2019.0955}
}
MLA
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MLA Copy
Ljubotina, Megan K., and James F. Cahill. “Effects of neighbour location and nutrient distributions on root foraging behaviour of the common sunflower.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 286, no. 1911, Sep. 2019, p. 20190955. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0955.
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