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

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 annuus L.), 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 r

SUBMITTER: Ljubotina MK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6784730 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature