A plant’s ability to reproduce on its own — through self-fertilisation — could be a key trait that helps it become invasive, according to a recent study from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.<\/p>\n
Invasive plant species are non-native organisms that spread aggressively, displacing local flora, altering local ecosystems and reducing biodiversity.<\/p>\n
While most flowering plants need pollen from another individual of the same species to produce seeds, plants of some species can reproduce using their own pollen, or even without pollen — this way even a single plant can establish a new population.<\/p>\n
The idea, known as Baker’s law, suggests that plants capable of ‘uniparental reproduction’ or self-fertilisation should be better invaders, researchers said.<\/p>\n
Saskya van Nouhuys, associate professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc, and Narashiman Nagendra Rao, a former MSc student at CES, examined 28 species from the daisy family (Asteraceae), comparing 11 invasive species, eight non-invasive alien species, and nine native species.<\/p>\n
The study, published in the journal Biological Invasions, involved collecting plants from disturbed habitats such as roadside and open spaces across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over a year.<\/p>\n
Seeds or plant cuttings from at least five individuals of each species were grown on campus, while a few hard-to-grow native species were studied in the wild, with a total of about 900 plants examined.<\/p>\n
The researchers tested whether the plants could reproduce without cross-pollination by comparing self-pollinated and naturally pollinated flowers, and then assessed seed viability and germination.<\/p>\n
They found that all the 11 invasive Asteraceae species studied could reproduce uniparentally, while most native and non-invasive alien species remained self-incompatible — they usually required a pollen from another plant.<\/p>\n
“Uniparental reproduction is a conceptually simple trait. It has been exciting to see such clear evidence of its advantage for invasive species,” van Nouhuys said.<\/p>\n
Two especially aggressive invaders, Ageratum conyzoides and Bidens pilosa, were found to be largely self-incompatible in their native range of Mexico.<\/p>\n
However, in India — where the species are alien — they had evolved to become uniparental, suggesting that individuals capable of self-fertilisation were favoured during the invasion process.<\/p>\n
“Before our experiments, the idea of reproductive strategies shifting during invasion seemed like a very far-fetched idea to me and I thought that previous evidences of such shifts were very rare occurrences,” Rao said.<\/p>\n
“The results from our experiments and that of our collaborators absolutely baffled me,” Rao said.<\/p>\n
As invasive species continue to spread worldwide, reproductive strategy should become a routine part of weed-risk assessment programmes, which researchers suggest are used to predict which introduced plants are most likely to become future invaders.<\/p>\n
“Invasive species are called invasive for a reason. They establish and then flourish in a new location. When this happens, existing species decline or disappear entirely, which changes the whole landscape,” van Nouhuys said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plant’s ability to reproduce on its own — through self-fertilisation — could be a key trait that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[278624,4136,49,48,66],"class_list":["post-788460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-asteraceae","tag-baker","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}