Gender Variation in Relation to Resource Allocation in Ambrosia artemisiifolia

Ambrosia artemisiifolia에 있어서 자원분배와 관련된 성비의 변이

I examined the relationship between allocations to plant size components such as plant height, total leaf weight, and nuber of branches and to reproductive components such as the number and weight of male and female fowers in three populations of the monoecious, wind-pollinated Ambrosia artemisiifolia. In particular, the two types of gender of plants, phenotypic and functional gender, were related to resource allocation. Mean values of all plant size and reproductive components differed significantly among the three populations. Such inter-population differences did not exist for both photosynthetic and reproductive efforts, Plant size components were mostly positively correlated with reproductive components among plants. However, the relationships between photosynthetic effort and reproductive components were largely negative and inconsistent among populations. The phenotypic gender was much lover than 0.5 in all of the three populations. Pairwise correlations between functional gender and each allocation measurement such as plant size components, reproductive components, photosynthetic effort, and reproductive effort were not consistent across the three populations. These results suggest that the gender of A. artemisiifolia measured as flower production responds sensitively to environmental conditions which might differ whithin as well as among populations.