Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Nutrient stoichiometry in Pinguicula vulgaris: Nutrient availability, plant size, and reproductive status
Responsible organisation
2005 (English)In: Ecology, ISSN 0012-9658, E-ISSN 1939-9170, Vol. 86, no 4, p. 982-991Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Current understanding of the extent, causes for, and consequences of variation in nutrient composition in plants is limited. Important questions to be addressed include to what extent nutrients covary, how flexible nutrient ratios are within a population or species, how reproduction influences nutrient ratios, and how much the ratios of nutrients to mass and nutrients to each other change through ontogeny. This information is needed to assess the physiological and ecological consequences of plant nutrient composition and to what extent plants function as balanced systems in acquisition and allocation of resources. We studied the variation in nutrient stoichiometry (i.e., the ratio between contents of different nutrients within a plant) in relation to three factors: (1) environmental availability of nitrogen, (2) plant size, and (3) reproductive status. We investigated these questions in 11 populations of the carnivorous plant Pinguicula vulgaris in northern Scandinavia. Dry mass and N and P content were measured for reproductive and vegetative portions of flowering individuals and for winter buds corresponding to four reproductive states: control reproductive individuals, experimentally vegetative individuals (from which flower buds were removed), adult vegetative individuals, and individuals below the threshold size for reproduction. [N], [P], and to a lesser extent, N and P content were positively related to soil N, but not to prey capture. Nutrient stoichiometry was also size dependent; in general, small plants were relatively enriched in N and relatively depleted in P compared to larger plants. Reproductive status affected not only size, but also nutrient stoichiometry of the resulting winter bud. Winter buds derived from reproductive individuals had a higher [N] and lower [P] than those of the different types of nonreproductive individuals. Our findings indicate that studies of nutrient stoichiometry in plants must go beyond links between environmental and plant nutrient concentrations to consider internal processes such as growth and reproduction.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
ECOLOGICAL SOC AMER , 2005. Vol. 86, no 4, p. 982-991
Keywords [en]
carnivorous plant; Pinguicula vulgaris; plant nutrient stoichiometry; plant size; reproductive status; Scandinavia; size dependence; soil nutrient availability
National Category
Natural Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:polar:diva-3658DOI: 10.1890/04-0354OAI: oai:DiVA.org:polar-3658DiVA, id: diva2:1103565
Available from: 2017-05-30 Created: 2017-05-30 Last updated: 2017-05-30

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full text
In the same journal
Ecology
Natural Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 77 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf